


Take Me Home

by NotYourHoney



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Sokka (Avatar), Fluff, Gay Zuko (Avatar), Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kidnapping, M/M, Minor Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, azula has mommy issues, because of the kyoshi island episode i must confess, detective sokka, rating may change later, zuko has daddy issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:47:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24483034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotYourHoney/pseuds/NotYourHoney
Summary: Zuko is the son of billionaire Ozai Ryu, an international shipping company. One night, he goes for a walk, and he never comes back. Sokka is the lead detective assigned to his case. With immense media pressure on him, an extremely powerful man breathing down his neck, and an impossible case to solve, Sokka is scrambling for clues to find Zuko.What everyone doesn't know is that Sokka and Zuko are not exactly strangers.Real world AU.
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 118
Kudos: 338





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote the story based off this post that I made: https://notyour--honey.tumblr.com/post/619424935199260672/au-where-zuko-is-son-of-a-rich-bilionaire-tycoon
> 
> This exists in a real world AU, so there is no bending of any sort. The minor character death refers to Zuko's mother, which will be a plot point throughout the story. 
> 
> Also, this is a bit of a slow burn story! I promise that it'll be worth it though!
> 
> Tags will be added as the story progresses and I have a greater sense of the specifies of individual chapters.

The whole idea had been stupid. Spend a quiet night in, work on his composition. Fine, that was fine. Have a drink to unwind. Fine. 

Invite Azula. 

That was where it went sour,  _ stupid _ . 

Zuko shivered and yanked his flannel robe closer around his body, but the thin layer of cotton was a feeble and laughable attempt to protect him from the Canadian November. His breaths came out in quick, angry huffs of white air. He didn’t know where he was going. Just away from her. 

Conversations with Azula had a tendency to blow up into arguments. Things were fine until their mother had been brought up. Azula had some things to say, and what self control Zuko usually maintained was shattered by the three glasses of wine fogging up his brain. 

He should have turned back. He was cold and still kind of drunk. He was exhausted, but he didn’t want to turn back. He wanted to put as much physical space between him and Azula as possible. 

Where could he even go? His father’s estate was huge, sure, but there was no shelter besides the original warehouse that had been built on the property and the house that he was walking away from. The warehouse would be empty and basically a giant freezer this time of night. He had no idea why they even kept the warehouse. It was a stupid sentimental rusting old building, a mar on a gorgeous estate. The garden, and his greenhouse, were back behind the house. A few snowflakes landed in Zuko’s eyes. His curses rang through the night air. He marched down the front lawn, swaying and shivering and wishing to every God he knew that he had grabbed a coat before stomping away.

It was just a stupid fight. He could brush her off.

Still, he reasoned with himself as his footsteps traced farther away from the house. There was something about Azula, something about the way she argued. Zuko had never seen her get angry in her life. She didn’t need to; she got everything handed to her. She was always calm. He hated it. Even when their mother had died, she had been eerily calm. It infuriated him when he hurled every insult he had designed to hurt her specifically at her, and she did nothing more than laugh. If she wasn’t heading so many departments in their father’s company, he might’ve thought she was just stupid. But no. This was a reaction manufactured to wound him.

Zuko stopped in a patch of frozen grass. He needed to turn back. He couldn’t feel his toes, and he was right by the warehouse. How long had he been walking? He needed to turn back and call Uncle Iroh. He would know just what to say to make Zuko feel better.

He heard a groan, pained like the howl of a dog. Someone swore loudly.

“Hello? You okay?” He shuffled towards the warehouse on the property. The lights were on. He didn’t see any security officers around. He’d never actually been here at 2 AM, so maybe it was normal. Maybe they were inside. “Anybody in there?” 

He approached the giant metal door to the warehouse, which was already open. He slipped inside. The lights were on, and a single Fire Industries shipping truck idled inside. Pop music quietly played from inside the truck, but the driver’s seat was empty. “Anyone?” 

Something heavy smashed into his head from behind. Zuko was unconscious before his head hit the hard cement floor.

A few hundred meters away, a phone rang. Someone picked up. 

“Yes? Good. Bring back the body when it’s done. Don’t contact me again.” 

The line went dead. 

***

“Sokka, Captain assigned us a new case. Do you have a minute to talk?” 

Sokka had a bagel sandwich sticking out of his mouth and a sugary iced coffee in hand. He was half asleep, and the sound of the busy precinct in the morning was already giving him a headache. He pulled the bagel out of his mouth and swallowed. “Good morning to you too, Suki.” 

“Aw, did someone get home late last night? You never drink coffee past ten, and it’s…” She checked her watch and frowned. “Three o’clock, Jesus, Sokka. What happened to you?” Unlike Sokka, Suki was always alert and ready for work early in the morning. She probably went on some ridiculous run at some ridiculous hour of the morning, Sokka thought glumly. 

“Dude, don’t even get me started. Just brief me.” Sokka slumped into his wheely chair, gnawing on his food as Suki opened the beige file. “Zuko Ryu, age twenty four, was reported missing a few hours ago by his sister. He went out for a walk and never came back.” 

Sokka frowned. “Ryu, where do I know that name…”

“He’s the son of Ozai Ryu, founder of Fire Industries.” Suki slid over a photograph of Zuko. 

Sokka nodded slowly, but the photograph only made him more confused. The first thing he noticed was the scar on Zuko’s face. Even in the dim light of a photograph, it was jarring. Poor guy must have been in an accident or something. That wasn’t it, though. Something about him was familiar. 

“Wait…” Sokka sipped his coffee as he stared at the photo, then looked up at Suki with wide eyes. “Zuko! This is— Holy shit! This guy lived with us for a month when I was a kid, him and his sister! Didn’t his dad kill somebody? Wait,  _ Zuko’s _ father owns Fire Industries? They’re the biggest shipping company in the world! How did he make it after that murder?” 

“Alleged murder. He was never convicted. He had a really good PR team, I guess. I ran a few google searches earlier and it looks like they’ve scrubbed the internet of anything that has to do with the case.” Suki cleared her throat, shifting a few papers around. “Anyways. Zuko was last seen in the early hours of the morning. According to his sister, he never goes out like this. The grounds of the Ryu home were searched about an hour ago, but he didn’t turn up. They even brought in the K9 unit.” 

“You love those dogs.” 

“Yeah, but they lost his scent just off the property. Someone turned off the security cameras way up until the turnoff to a main road, and he left behind his phone, so we think he was kidnapped by someone who had knowledge of the estate. It’s insane. We have no leads, and no suspects. It could have been anybody.”

Sokka sipped his coffee and nodded. “You interviewed the father yet? You know, what with him being billionaire OJ Simpson.” 

“He provided us with most of the details, but I haven’t properly interviewed him yet. I was waiting for you to come in. He was on a business trip, but he flew in early this morning. Also, don’t call him that.”

“Wasn’t going to,” Sokka mumbled. 

“We can go now, if you want.” 

“Wait,” Sokka said, throwing the last piece of his breakfast sandwich in his mouth. She crossed her arms and glared at him. “Okay,” he said after swallowing, “you go get the car warmed up. I’ve gotta talk with the captain real quick, and I’ll meet you downstairs.” 

Suki was already walking away, waving a hand behind her. She snatched her parka off the back of her own chair. Fishing her keys out of the pocket, she said, “Finish that coffee. I do not want a repeat of last time.” 

“This one doesn’t even have milk in it!”

Suki walked out the door, shaking her head. 

Sokka slurped down the rest of his coffee, wiped his sticky hands off on the brown paper wrapper of his bagel, and headed to the Captain’s office. He was nervous; he had never once questioned a case, not in his entire detective career, but there was something he needed to know before he went ahead with this one. 

He knocked twice, took a deep breath, and slipped inside. 

“Good morning, Dad.” 

Hakoda looked up from his computer and slipped off his wire rim reading glasses. “Sokka. Did you need something?” 

“You know that case you assigned me and Suki? The one with the Ryu kid.” 

Hakoda leaned back in his chair, a pleasant smile on his lips. “Yes, I remember. Good kid.” 

“Why’d you assign it to me then? If you knew who he was?” Sokka pressed his back against the wall and crossed his arms.

“Do you have a problem with him?”

“No!” Sokka stuck his hands up and shook his head. “No, nothing like that. Just, isn’t there, I don’t know, bias or something? Because I knew him?” 

“Sokka, I wouldn’t be assigning you this case if I didn’t think you were the best man for the job. Maybe the fact that you knew him as a child is a good thing. It’ll help you get inside his head.” Hakoda looked at his son with a stern expression, and Sokka smiled sheepishly. “If you had kept in touch with him, I wouldn’t have assigned you this case. But given that you two haven’t spoken in over ten years, there isn’t any problem. Now, you should go down and meet your partner before she drives off without you.” 

“Nah, she wouldn’t. The car ride would be too boring without me.” 

Hakoda laughed, and Sokka smiled. It was nice to see his father relax. Since becoming captain of the precinct, he’d been under an immense amount of stress. 

“Son, one more thing.” 

“Yeah?” 

“You should know that Fire Industries is being investigated for some shoddy business practices. They’ve got a class action lawsuit pending for unpaid wages and tax fraud. I know you don’t like to read,” he started, and Sokka groaned, “but you should familiarize yourself with the company.” 

“Why?” Sokka huffed. Hakoda gave him a stern look, but he continued: “I’m not investigating the company, I’m rescuing a kidnapped guy. Is he even involved in the company?” 

“No. Not even a little bit. He’s a skilled musician, but he doesn’t have any involvement in his father’s company. Weird.” Hakoda frowned, mumbled something to himself, and turned back to his computer. He slipped on his reading glasses. “You should get going. Be wary, is what I’m saying. Ozai is not an honest man.”

“I’m always wary.”

“I know.” Hakoda stopped typing then. He peered up at Sokka over his reading glasses. “Yesterday was the anniversary,” he said, carefully choosing his words. “Katara tried to call you.”

Sokka shrugged. “I fell asleep.” 

Hakoda stared at him for a moment. “You should call her later. Right now, get back to your case.” 

Sokka nodded. He stared at the floor. “Are you okay?” 

“I’m okay.”

“Good.” He looked up and smiled at his father. 

“You should get going.”

“Aye aye, captain.” Sokka saluted. Hakoda saluted back. They both giggled, and the tension between them melted. 

Sokka turned and left the office. He snatched the case file off his desk, along with his winter coat, and started flicking through the papers as he walked towards the garage. He found a photo of a young Zuko, posted in a newspaper clipping. The headline read, “ _ OZAI RYU SAYS: I DIDN’T KILL MY WIFE!”  _ Goddamn sensationalists. 

He stroked the image of the boy. Suki didn’t know. He didn’t talk to her about this kind of stuff. If Hakoda’s reaction was anything to go by, he also didn’t know what had happened between him and Zuko during that month living together. If Sokka knew what was good for him, he wouldn’t tell anybody. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my beta reader statusquo_ergo! 
> 
> Come join me on my tumblr notyour--honey and talk about Zukka with me!
> 
> As always, your comments are greatly appreciated in any form! Your feedback helps me write better stories!


	2. Chapter 2

Zuko wasn’t sure when he actually woke up. He couldn’t differentiate between the horrible dream-like haze he was in and the horrible dreams he was having. He only decided with conviction that he was awake when it became apparent that his toes were about to freeze off his feet. His eyes slowly opened.

It was pitch black, and he was crammed in the back of a truck. He knew because he kept jostling against the steel walls, and he could hear cars zooming round him. The steel walls of the truck stank of iron, like old blood. That, or he was bleeding somewhere. Someone had hit him on the head, he remembered. He was still in his pajamas. His head ached.

He tried to move, but his hands were tied with stiff rope behind his back. His feet were tied up, too, as well as his knees and elbows. He tried to yell for help, but he couldn't around the gag stuffed in his mouth. The rough texture of a rag pressed against his dry tongue like sandpaper.

He peered around in the darkness. There were beams of light coming in through the bottom of the truck. It was daytime, then. 

“But it’s smarter. We can have it both ways.” He heard a male voice coming from behind him, and sat very still so he could listen. A deeper male voice spoke, then. 

“It’s what he would’ve wanted.”

“Rest his soul.”

“He would’ve said to kidnap him for real, hold him hostage, and finally get away from that nut job. We have our way out!” 

Kidnap? Zuko shuddered and felt his heartbeat pick up. He closed his eyes and tried to wriggle against his restraints, bending over awkwardly into his tense thighs. He never tried to get himself into these situations. After his mother’s death, he’d made it his business to get as far away from the family business as possible so stupid shit like this wouldn’t happen. He really thought it had been working, though. Who would want to kidnap him? He didn’t know anything about Fire Industries. He didn’t know any industry secrets. If there was anyone to be kidnapped, it was Azula. 

“We could fix ourselves fake passports and get out of the country,” insisted the deeper voice. “Cayman Islands or something. But what are we gonna do about the hostage?” 

The truck turned away from the busy road. Gravel crunched beneath the tires, and the whir of traffic faded behind them. 

“We’ll figure something out. I know for sure I ain’t killing this guy. Too big a name. I don’t trust him to actually get us out of prison.”

“Me neither, never really got on board with that part of the plan. We don’t need him.” 

Who was this ‘him’? Zuko leaned his head back. He could taste the rag now. It was revolting, and it polluted his saliva so that he had to swallow the taste down too. Distantly, he felt a strange sensation, like water trickling over his skin, running up his arms as the lack of circulation became more obvious.

The truck stopped. Two car doors opened and then slammed shut. Zuko would have groaned at the noise if not for the painful dryness of his throat, leaving him with only the ability to breathe through his nose and ignore the taste, the pain, the cold. 

The doors to the back of the truck swung open. Sunlight poured in, and Zuko squeezed his eyes shut. The truck heaved as two people got in, gripped him underneath the armpits, and dragged his limp body outside into the bright winter afternoon. 

***

“Are we gonna talk about it?” 

Sokka didn’t look up from the papers on his lap. “Talk about what?” 

“I’m not stupid. I’m a detective. You can’t hide stuff from me.” 

“Wasn’t trying to,” Sokker muttered, growing nervous. He looked out the window. Watching the cars pass by on the highway was like watching colourful fish swim around at the dentist’s office. Calming, peaceful, but always a preamble for something grim to come.

“It was the anniversary of your mother’s death yesterday.”

“Oh.” He was still nervous, but for a different reason now. Of course she didn’t know about Zuko, that was stupid. “We don’t have to talk about it.” 

He didn’t have to look up to know that Suki was glancing at him periodically. “You know, I never went through what you went through. After I found out I was adopted, I never looked for my birth mom.” 

“Thanks for the sympathy,” Sokka hissed, wincing at the sharp edge in his voice. He met Suki’s glare. 

“Not what I’m saying here, idiot.” She fixed her gaze on the road and sighed. “It must be hard to lose someone that important to you. I know it happened a really long time ago, so everyone thinks you should be okay. But I know you. You haven’t been sleeping or eating right. It’s okay to say you need help. I’m here for you, your sister and your dad are here for you. We just want you to be okay.” 

Sokka closed his eyes and leaned back in the worn leather seat. He wanted to melt and disappear. “I know. It isn’t like I don’t know.” 

“Good.” She reached over and squeezed his arm, then replaced her hand on the steering wheel. “Have you found anything interesting in the case file?” 

Sokka relaxed. Suki had a special knack for getting the information she wanted out of Sokka and then making him forget she ever asked. It made her an excellent detective. “If anything, I’m even more confused,” He said. “What motive would someone have to kidnap Zuko? He has no stakes in the company, and no involvement. His sister heads a couple of the departments, and there’s something in here about an Iroh every now and then, Ozai’s brother. Zuko studies music and travels in his spare time. I thought maybe a kidnapper might want information, but Zuko doesn’t know anything.”

“Could it just be a mugging or something?” Suki glanced down at the file on Sokka’s lap, then turned her attention back to the road, frowning and wracking her mind for clues.

“No, the cameras were turned off, remember?” Sokka shuffled through the file until he landed on the security details of the property, a thick stapled stack of paper with tiny print. “They’ve got a pretty legit security system. Armed guards, Prince of Dubai style. Someone planned this. I wanna get the footage from the street outside their home, although I doubt whoever did this was dumb enough to leave a trail behind there.”

Suki tapped on the steering wheel impatiently. “Okay,” she said, twisting her torso to check her blind spot. “What about suspects? It was someone who had intimate knowledge of the estate, right? So what about Ozai?” 

“He has no motive. Kidnap his own son? The press this thing is gonna kick up is just gonna bring more attention to his lawsuit right now. This is the last thing he needs.” 

“Azula could have done it.”

“Yeah, I thought about that, but why? She’s extremely successful and Zuko poses absolutely no threat to her position. Given his travel history, she and him would rarely cross paths anyways. Neither of them have a good reason to make him disappear. Besides, she called in his disappearance.” Sokka tried to remember what Azula was like. When she had lived with them, she used to wet the bed on purpose and cut up Zuko’s clothes. She had been Katara’s age, but made no attempt to get along with her. 

“Doesn’t mean she couldn’t have done it.” Suki turned off the highway. 

“That’s true.” Sokka was quiet for a moment, leafing through the thick stack of papers. Last known addresses, travel history, even his allergies. Suki did a thorough job. “Another thing. There’s a shipping warehouse on the estate. The property originally only had the warehouse, but Ozai bought the land around it when he became rich and built his home right next to it.” Judging by the photo, the building was worse for wear. Why would a billionaire keep a rusty old warehouse next to his pristine home? 

“I’ll bet he still gets direct shipments there, given that he has a sister delivery company,” said Suki. “I’ll bet he has a security detail, too. We can question them, and anyone who’s been in or out of the estate.” 

They were driving on a county road now. The fish were growing scarce, Sokka thought to himself with dry humour. 

“We’re almost there. You should know, Ozai is known to be a temperamental man. Be nice.”

“I can be nice!”

“Okay, do it extra hard. If he really wanted to, he could make our lives a living hell.”

***

“Man, I love when bad stuff happens to rich people.” 

Suki closed her car door, then stuffed her keys in her jacket pocket. She smoothed down a few flyaway hairs in the window of the driver’s side. “What? Why?”

“Means I get to look inside their fancy houses and it isn’t weird.” He leaned against the hood of the car and watched his breath form tiny white puffs of air. In his left hand, he held a black bag containing supplies for collecting evidence.

“It wasn’t weird before, but you made it weird.” 

Sokka snickered. They both marched up the white steps to Parisian style double doors and Suki rang the doorbell. 

“Tall doors,” said Sokka.

“Sure are.”

“Crazy tall.” 

Suki said nothing, but looked at Sokka with a deadpan expression. She recognized this preamble.

“Taller than two of you stacked one on top of the other. I’d say this door is two and a half Suki’s tall.” 

“When are you gonna drop the height thing?” 

“Well, I can’t drop much more than I have to when I talk to you, or my knees will hurt. Get it? Because you’re short.” He laughed at his own terrible joke. Suki elbowed him, but then the door opened and they both stood stiff and proper. 

A young woman, not Azula, stood behind the door. She was dressed in pink from head to toe; fuschia crop top, pale pink pants, hot pink shoes, and a flower patterned scrunchie. Even her cheeks were rosy. Sokka’s eyes hurt. “Are you the detectives?” 

Suki nodded and held up her badge. “I’m Detective Tessen, this is my partner Detective Clearwater. May we come in?” 

The young women stepped aside. Inside, the house was warm, but overwhelmingly modern and empty. The walls were a stark white, and the furniture looked uncomfortable. “Mr. Ryu isn’t back yet. There was a problem at one of his shipping warehouses that he had to deal with immediately.”

“Sorry, who are you?” asked Sokka. The young woman beamed and waved for the two detectives to follow her. 

“My name is Ty Lee. I’m Azula’s friend. She wanted me here for moral support!” 

Ty Lee’s enthusiasm was just on the wrong side overwhelming. Sokka swore he saw her skip a few times on their way to a giant room. It was empty, save for a few sofas, a coffee table, and god awful too-white lighting that reminded Sokka of middle school classrooms at 8 AM. Azula lounged with her arms splayed over the top of a white leather sofa. Her ink black hair was pulled into a sleek topknot, and her clothes looked like they’d been steamed onto her body. She looked like a doll. A haunted doll, Sokka thought to himself. 

When she saw Sokka and Suki, she stood up. “You must be detectives. Sit.” 

Sokka and Suki exchanged a nervous glance. Her voice was barren of emotion. As soon as they both sat down, she plopped back in her seat. She was relaxed, and it unnerved Sokka. “I’m Detective Clearwater, and this is Detective Tessen. You must be Azula.” 

“Yes. I don’t care what your names are. What happened to my brother?” Ty Lee, despite her claim to have been there for moral support, was nowhere to be found. Not that Azula needed her. She looked perfectly comfortable on her own. She sat like a man, arms spread and toes pointed outwards, pelvis scooched too far forward. Sokka sat up a little straighter.

Sokka took a sharp breath, and Suki quickly stepped in. “As of yet, we don’t have any leads about your brother’s whereabouts. We were hoping to talk to your dad.” 

“Well he isn’t here.” Azula crossed her arms. “He had something more important to do. Zuzu probably just ran off like he always does. He’s never home, you know.” 

“Mister Ryu hasn’t left the country.” 

Azula laughed at the formality. It was not a nice laugh. “So what, he disappeared? He must be somewhere.” 

A beat of silence. Sokka refused to talk; he would lose his temper. Suki asked, “Who was the last person to see him?” 

“Me.” 

“Alright. Can you describe your last time seeing him?” 

Azula blew a chunk of hair out of her face, and Sokka couldn’t help but see the resemblance between Azula and a disgruntled donkey. “It was around one in the morning. He had a few too many to drink, and he started screaming at me. Then he walked out the door and didn’t come back.” 

Suki scribbled notes down in a notepad. “Okay. What was the argument about?” 

“About our mother,” Azula said smoothly. “I’m sure you know that she’s dead. He gets emotional when he drinks.” 

“Did you say anything to provoke Mister Ryu?”

“I didn’t say a word.” She examined her nails, bored. “So you really don’t know anything? I would’ve thought detectives would be smarter than that.” 

Suki swallowed. Her skin had turned white where she gripped her pen too tightly. 

Sokka interjected. “We’re working on it. Do you know anyone who might want to hurt your brother? Also, do you know when your father is coming back?” 

“How should I know?” 

“Figured since you’re his daughter and all—” Suki poked Sokka. He clamped his mouth shut and thought about his next words. “Is there anything else you know that might help us with our investigation, Miss Ryu?” Sokka asked, stressing every word. 

Azula shrugged. “Bring home my brother or else.” 

“Right.” Sokka huffed and snatched the notepad from Suki. He scribbled on a new sheet of paper and ripped it out, sliding it across the white coffee table between them. “This is my personal email and phone number. Now, I don’t usually do this. I’m only giving these to you because this is such a high priority case.” If he looked at Suki, he knew she would be staring at her lap and trying to hide a smile. Azula shifted forward in her seat, intrigued. “If you remember anything at all that can help us, just call or email me. If you don’t mind now, we’d like to speak to anyone else who was on the property at the time of the disappearance.” 

Azula plucked the sheet of paper up, examined it, then set it back down. “There were two security guards. Everyone else had gone home.” 

“Wait,” said Suki. “I know that there’s an old warehouse on the property. Do you think we could take a look at that?” 

Azula smiled in a way that gave Sokka chills. Something about the way the smile showed teeth and didn’t reach her eyes made it resemble the warning look of a rabid dog more than a friendly expression. “The warehouse is not a part of this property. They’re separate. If you want to search it, you’ll have to get a warrant, which I assume you were too sloppy to prepare. Anyways, you’d be wasting your time. There’s nothing in that dump.” 

Sokka had seen Suki put up with some pretty horrible perps, but usually they were already arrested and in the interrogation room. He’d never seen her so red in the face while interviewing the family of a victim. They’d handled few kidnapping cases together, and usually the family of the victim were tearful parents, drugged with fear at the statistics they’d hear on NPR about the urgency of kidnapping cases. He wanted so badly to tell her that this was how Azula had been even when she was a child, but he bit his cheek instead. 

“Alright. We’ll come back with a warrant.” Suki stood up and smoothed down her coat. She shot Sokka a look, one that he recognized. 

“Hey, _ Azula _ , I’m sure you don’t mind me calling you that,” he started, and her smile fell at hearing her own name, but he continued before she could protest. “You think I could take a look at your brother’s room?”

“Down the hall, take the stairs up, then take a left and then a right. The door on the right.” 

“Thanks a bunch. Detective, I’ll meet you outside?” 

“Sounds good.” Suki hesitated, as though she expected Azula to show her out, but Azula had already whipped out her phone and was scrolling through it in disdain. She mouthed ‘what the fuck’ at Sokka, shook her head, and left from where they had come. Sokka, not wanting to be alone with Azula, picked up his evidence bag and quickly walked the other way. 

The house was decorated in shades ranging from hospital white to sand beige. Every now and then, a spatter of red graced a painting or a vase of flowers. Rich people’s homes looked like empty hospitals, he realized with a shudder. 

There wasn’t enough time to search every room. Still, Sokka poked his head into room after empty room. The kitchen was huge and looked miserably empty. The fridge only had alcohol and sparkling water. What was the point of all that money if they didn’t have any food?

He crept up the stairs. The doors were red now instead of white. He tried every door he could find, but half of them were locked. He followed Azula’s instructions: a left, a right, and a long hallway with a door on either side. He tried the door on the left first, but it was locked. The door on the left was slightly ajar. Sokka slipped inside. 

It was unmistakably Zuko’s room. The walls were painted a pale blue, white crown molding giving an elegant feel to the space. The furniture was still white, but the blanket was blue and the paintings were blue and the windows faced the sunset. Even the baby grand piano in the center of the room was blue, and when he tipped his head back, the ceiling had been painted into a gorgeous rendition of a cloudy afternoon sky.

And on the bed, placed neatly by the pillow, sat a worn stuffed lemur. 

Sokka sank down to his knees and took a shaking breath. He closed his eyes and shook his head. He could remember like it was yesterday. 

_ “I can’t believe she’s gone sometimes. The only relief I get is those few moments every morning before I remember what happened.” The grass shifted around them. Sokka turned to lie on his side and looked at Zuko. The boy clutched Sokka’s toy with both arms and stared up at the clouds. He wasn’t crying anymore, at least. _

_ “I get it.”  _

_ “I know you do. How did you move past it?”  _

_ Sokka glanced up at the sky, and then back down at Zuko’s still expression. “Everyone kept telling me she was gone forever. That never felt true. I could always feel her around me. I stopped trying to convince myself that she was gone. I talk to her all the time. She’s up in heaven, listening to me. She’s an angel.”  _

_ “Wow.” Zuko squinted up at Sokka. “My mom is an angel, too. She was an angel before she died. I’m never going to see her again. She was the only person who made me happy.” His eyes welled up with tears. He was like a sink these days, Sokka thought to himself. _

_ “Are you happy now?” Sokka hesitated before adding, “With me?” _

_ Zuko smiled and squeezed the stuffed lemur. “Yeah. I guess I am.”  _

Sokka shook his head. There was no time for this. He stood up. 

He cursed his luck when he walked around a few times and realized the room had been cleaned. It still stank of bleach and rubbing alcohol. The desk was empty, but he spotted a laptop. Donning plastic gloves, he carefully placed the laptop into an evidence bag and sealed it shut. He also bagged Zuko’s cellphone. Besides the sheet music stacked on the desk, there were no other papers.

Sokka flipped through the sheet music, shifty eyed. He recognized Chopin and Mozart, but there were other German sounding names he didn’t know. Classical music fan. Wouldn’t have pegged him as one. He used to like rock music.

After giving the room one final sweep, Sokka placed the evidence in his black bag, hauled it over his shoulder, and hurried downstairs. Suki was already waiting in the car, fuming. Sokka placed the evidence in the trunk before getting in and buckling his seatbelt.

Suki groaned and pressed her head against the steering wheel. “I  _ hate _ this case. Those were the shittiest security officers I’ve ever spoken with. It was so obvious they’d been paid off! And let me tell you, that Ty Lee girl? Real pain in my ass!” 

Sokka half listened as Suki ranted. His heart was still racing. 

He had never forgotten Zuko. He just assumed that Zuko had forgotten him. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my beta reader statusquo_ergo!
> 
> Come join me on my tumblr notyour--honey and talk about Zukka with me!
> 
> As always, your comments are greatly appreciated in any form! What did you think of this chapter? Your feedback helps me write better stories!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things are starting to heat up....

Sokka made a beeline for his desk as soon as he and Suki returned to the precinct. Suki sent the phone and laptop to tech for analysis, and then got to work combing through surveillance footage. Sokka murmured something noncommittal about helping her later. Right now, he needed to find out as much as he could about Fire Industries. 

“Son.” Sokka didn’t notice the hours until a hand clapped his shoulder. He jolted and looked up. Hakoda peered down at him with a concerned expression. “It’s eight o’clock.” 

Sokka looked around. The night shift crew sat where his coworkers usually sat. Blinds covered the dark windows. “Sorry,” he mumbled, leaning back to stretch and crack a few joints. “Got so caught up in my research.” 

Hakoda pulled up a chair and sat across from Sokka. “Find anything?” 

“Sort of.” Sokka turned his PC screen so that Hakoda could see the dozens of tabs crowding the top bar of his browser. He clicked on one. A PDF of a spreadsheet appeared. 

“Fire Industries’ financial records for last year. I won’t bore you with the details, but basically, they’re reporting a lot more revenue than would make sense.” Sokka leaned back in his creaky chair, stroking the stubble on his chin. “If you calculate the output of all of his businesses and warehouses, it doesn’t add up to this amount.” 

“Isn’t this why they have a lawsuit?” 

“No, the lawsuit is about tax fraud. What I see here looks more like money laundering. It took me all day to figure it out, so I guess no one noticed. That, or Ozai shut down anyone who did.” 

Hakoda frowned. “Money laundering? Why would he need to do that? Are you sure?” 

“Dad, when it comes to math, I’m always sure. I double checked. Something shady is going on here.” 

“I’ll look into it right away,” said Hakoda, starting to rise from his chair. 

“Wait.” Sokka turned his computer back around and turned off his screen. “Look, I can’t explain how I know, but I think that this is related to Zuko’s disappearance. I’m following a hunch. Can you save reporting it until we find him? Just in case Ozai really is involved in this. I need to collect all the facts first.” 

Hakoda said nothing for a moment. “Well,” he began, slow and careful, “I guess I could hold it off for a while. You haven’t gotten any closer to finding Zuko?”

“Suki got a warrant to search the warehouse. We’re checking it first thing in the morning. We found email threads between him and his uncle Iroh. Nothing special, though. Just check ups and an email thread on tea recommendations.” The transcript made Sokka laugh. Zuko evidently operated the computer like a seventy year old man; he sent formal thank you’s and signed emails with one word answers. “We contacted him, but he didn’t respond. We’ll get there, though.”

“I see.” 

“Oh, and before I forget, do you think you could get me the file on the Ryu murder?” Sokka collected his keys from a WORLD’S BEST BROTHER mug on his desk and began to zip up his coat. 

Hakoda hesitated. “That’s a closed case. Why do you need it?” 

“I need to know everything I can, right?”

“Sokka,” said Hakoda in a warning tone, “you know better than to open up old cases. You’re clouding your judgement.” 

“I know what I’m doing, Dad. Could you just get me the file?” Certain details of the case puzzled Sokka. Who would gain from kidnapping Zuko? They’d uncovered no ransom, no note, no trace. Maybe the clues he needed could lay in Ursa’s mysterious death. “I need to consider all possible leads.” 

Hakoda’s chest rose and fell in a deep breath, looking around the precinct as though searching for the strength to put up with his hot-headed son. He leaned in close and spoke in a low voice. “Fine. But you can’t let Ozai know that you’re looking into that case.” 

“Why not?” Sokka asked. 

“I didn’t tell you this before, but he’s friends with the commissioner. If he feels like you’re doing something out of line, he could hurt you pretty bad.” 

“That’s completely unethical!” 

Hakoda shrugged his shoulders and walked into his office. “It’s the truth. No one powerful has ever gotten where they are through ethical means.”

Sokka pulled his phone out of his back pocket. Two missed calls from Katara. He put the phone face down on his desk and grimaced.

Hakoda emerged from his office, a manila file in hand. “These are my personal notes. Can’t take out the official files out of the precinct. Lots of stuff that never made it into the case because we couldn’t prove it.” He handed Sokka the file and watched him weigh it. 

“Size of a small baby,” Sokka snickered. 

Hakoda shook his head and smiled. “Make sure you get it back to me by tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Sokka, already engrossed in the file. He fixated on a family photo. Zuko looked around six years old judging by the Mickey Mouse shorts and shoes. Ursa held his hand, and he stared at the camera as if looking past it. Sokka realized he probably was. When he wanted to snap a photo of his nephew Bumi, Katara or Aang stood behind the camera waving his favourite toy or he wouldn’t look

Ursa bore a formal smile as prim as her black dress. Ozai bore set brows and thick frown lines on his forehead. Azula, a toddler, avoided looking at the camera altogether, instead mid speech and staring at her father. 

Looking at the photo fel

“Do you remember Azula?” Sokka asked. He stroked the image subconsciously, tracing Zuko’s chubby cheeks and short ponytail. 

“How could I forget. She was a...difficult child.” Hakoda leaned in next to his son. Sokka snatched his own hand away from the photo as though it burned. 

“She’s a difficult adult, too. I don’t even think she remembered me.” 

“I wonder if she would remember me,” mused Hakoda. Arms crossed, he leaned down to get a closer look at the photo. “I liked Zuko, though. You liked him too.” 

Sokka laughed, nervous. “We got along. I mean, I did like him, yeah, but just because we lived together. Not that we wouldn’t be friends if we didn’t live together, but, erm.” Sokka cleared his throat. “Yeah.” 

Hakoda gave him an amused smile, leaning back and craning his neck to get a better look at him. “You two didn’t stay in contact though, did you?” 

Sokka’s expression crumpled. He closed the file with a resounding smack. “Nope. He never replied to any of my emails. Cut me off cold turkey.” 

Hakoda nodded. “I remember.” 

“Jokes on him, though. Looks like we’re gonna be reunited after all.” Sokka’s bitter, biting, sarcasm flew over Hakoda’s head. “Anyways, I’m heading home. I’ve got a lot of homework.” File in hand, Sokka started for the door.

“You forgot your phone,” called Hakoda. Sokka spun around. Hakoda stared quizzically at his phone screen. “Sokka.” He gave him a stern look as he handed him the phone back. “Call your sister. She’s worried about you.” 

Sokka snatched the phone and shoved it into his jacket pocket. “I will, later. Goodnight!” Before Hakoda could berate him further, Sokka scrambled out the door like a panicked dog. 

***

“Holy shit.” Sokka shut the car door behind him and stepped onto the concrete driveway leading to the Ryu estate. He squinted into the bleak November sunshine at the small crowd forming in front of the estate. Four security guards dressed in all black stood menacingly in front of the steps. Two or three dozen people chanted over and over again:  _ FIND OUR FAMILY! FIND OUR FRIENDS! _ A few people waved giant signs.

Suki whistled under her breath, shouldering the evidence collection bag. “What’s this about?” 

“Dunno,” replied Sokka, dumbfounded. He approached an ardently screaming young woman and tapped her on the shoulder. She jumped and turned to look at him with wide eyes. When she spotted the lanyard around his neck indicating that he was a detective, she stuttered, “We’re on public property, we have a permit, we haven’t--” 

Sokka put his hands out with a sheepish smile, shaking his head. “Not a problem. We’re not here for you guys.” 

The woman relaxed, sticking her chin up. She clutched her sign close to her abdomen. It read in huge block letters  _ BRING HOME OUR WORKERS!  _ Sokka tilted his head and crouched down to get a better look. “Twenty of his employees have gone missing,” the woman stuttered. “They get a contract in his company, and the job seems pretty good for a while. They always disappear. I lost my husband a month ago.” 

Sokka frowned and looked up at the woman. Her lips downturned in a gruesome frown. Tears streamed down her ruddy cheeks. “I haven’t heard of this. Why haven’t you reported this to the police?” 

She laughed. Through the frown, it sounded like a record scratch. “I’ve tried. We’ve all tried. Everyone here has lost somebody. Nothing ever gets investigated. The first missing person disappeared a  _ year _ ago! We’re all out of options!” 

Sokka’s eyes slowly closed in gut wrenching nausea as he connected the dots. Ozai was good friends with the commissioner. A case threatened the public image of his company. He possessed the power to squash any investigations before they even began. “Okay,” Sokka said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m here to investigate the disappearance of Zuko Ryu, Ozai Ryu’s son. I want to help you. I’ll do my best,” he started, pulling out his notepad to jot down notes. “What can you tell me?” 

The woman shifted her weight back and forth nervously. “There are twenty people missing, like I said. A lot of us have tried to post online about it, but the posts get taken down almost immediately.” She sniffled and said, “Fire Industries hires everyone on a contract. It always sounds promising and the money sounds good.” 

“What kinds of people?” 

The woman bit her lip. “Usually young men. My husband is twenty-two, but I know that the youngest person was eighteen. A few women went missing too, but not as many, because they don’t typically go for manual labour jobs. A lot of us came here as immigrants. At least five people came off reserves looking for work.” 

Sokka nodded. She looked terrified to speak the words out loud. He smiled in a way he hoped reassured her. “I’m detective Sokka Clearwater, by the way. Though I guess you read that on my badge. I work down at the sixtieth precinct. If you remember anything else, come down and ask for me by name.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a white business card, which he pressed into her shaking palm. “Don’t talk to anyone else.” 

The woman wrinkled her nose in confusion. “Why not?” 

Sokka wracked his brain for a believable answer. He couldn’t exactly tell her about his spur of the moment plan to go behind the commissioner’s back. 

“I’m going behind the commissioner’s back,” Sokka said. Okay, maybe he  _ could  _ tell her. 

Suki tapped on Sokka’s arm and nodded her head towards the house. “Ready to go?” 

“Yeah! Listen…” 

“Sela. My name is Sela.”

“Sela, what’s your husband’s name?

“Gansu.” 

Sokka wagged a finger at Suki, asking her to wait. He collected a little more information about Gansu. A few of the other protesters glanced nervously at him every now and then. He bid Sela farewell and then walked side by side with Suki up to the Ryu house. 

A minute later, the crowd of protestors behind them, Suki elbowed him hard in the side. “You’re going behind the commissioner’s back? Are you fucking insane!” 

“Ow!” Sokka stuck out his lower lip and rubbed his side. “That’s gonna leave a mark!” He stepped pointedly away from Suki. “Twenty people have gone missing, twenty-one if you count Zuko, and all of them are connected to Fire Industries. Captain said that Ozai was close with the commissioner,” he said in a hushed whisper. “This isn’t being looked into! Come on, Suki. Help me out here. I know I’m in the right.” 

Suki sighed. They began to ascend the steep stairwell leading to the front door. “Fucking-- Fine! But I’m your partner. You aren’t doing this alone.” She shrugged the black bag closer to her body and stared straight ahead, ignoring Sokka’s grin. 

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” 

Suki scoffed and jogged up the stairs ahead of Sokka. He hurried to catch up to her, but she moved quicker than him. By the time he reached her, smug and standing at the top step, Sokka swayed and sputtered, and hunched over to heave in lungfuls of air. No time remained to complain to Suki, though; the door opened, and this time, Azula herself stood behind it. “Oh. You two again.” 

Sokka straightened up, still breathing heavily, and gave her the nicest phony smile he could muster. “Is your dad home?” 

Azula frowned and turned around, not waiting for the two detectives. She simply walked back into the house, leaving the door cracked open and the two detectives behind. Suki and Sokka exchanged a confused look before stepping inside. 

“He’s in the back garden with the dogs.” 

Suki stumbled to catch up to Azula. Sokka walked behind them, half listening to Suki’s update on their leads and half examining the house. 

Their footsteps echoed like pin drops of water in an empty cave. Humongous, overwhelmingly blah works of minimalist art stretched from the hard marble floors to the high white ceilings. Sokka scrunched his nose at a painting of a huge framed red dot. The few open doors revealed furniture that blended into the wallpaper. The floor to ceiling windows lining the hall let in some light, at least 

Sokka grew up in Yellowknife, and he loved snowstorms. He loved when they became so encompassing that the world became a white haven. This house felt like a rich person’s bastardization of winter. Cold, white, but hideous.

More importantly, the house looked nothing like Zuko’s room. Clearly, he didn’t live here often. 

They stepped off of a polar bear pelt rug (“An antique,” Azula scoffed) and out a pair of double doors into the garden. Ozai sat at a brown outdoor patio set, staring out into an intricate array of winter bushes and dead trees. The sharp smell of pine hung heavy in the air. Three rottweilers surrounded him; one laying by his feet, one by his side, and the third nosing at a baseball laying in the grass. 

Ozai looked peculiar.. He wore his long black hair half up, and wore no facial hair save for a chin puff that grew past his collarbone. He wore a sharp black suit. He looked simultaneously furious and calm, and Sokka realized that the sharp angle of his eyebrows was to blame. 

Zuko had insisted that he had seen his father throw his mother against the wall, and seen her limp body hit the ground like a sack of stones. Sokka shuddered.. He wanted to spend as little time as possible looking at Ozai.

“Mister Ryu,” said Sokka, stepping forward and stiffly sticking out his hand, “my name is Detective Sokka Clearwater, and this is my partner Detective Suki Tessen.” 

“I have nothing to say.” 

Sokka blinked. “Pardon?” 

Ozai turned his permanent glare on Sokka. Sokka dropped his hand quickly to his side. “You’re here for Zuko. I don’t know where he is. I thought he’d gone off on another one of his trips. I haven’t been in the house for a week. I’ve been finalizing a shipping contract in China.” 

Sokka turned to Suki for help. She stepped forward. “Mister Ryu, we have a warrant to search the grounds of the warehouse adjacent to your property. If you don’t have anything to say, we’ll be on our way to do that now.” She held up the slip of paper, making a show of waving it in Azula’s direction.

Behind them, Azula scoffed. “Zuko doesn’t wander around the warehouse.” 

Suki turned toAzula with a sickly sweet smile. “That may be so, but we still need to check.” 

“I’m coming too.” Ozai rose to his feet and whistled, commanding the three dogs to follow. “We can cut around the house.” He led the way, and Suki, Sokka, and Azula followed. 

“So about the cameras in the house being cut—” 

“Why are you walking behind me?” Ozai turned to a now flushing Sokka. 

Suki snickered. “Come on Sokka, they won’t bite.” 

Ozai raised an eyebrow at this revelation. Azula laughed.

Sokka eyed the three dogs with much apprehension. Heart racing, he swallowed, drew in a quick breath, and stepped forward. He kept a good meter of distance between himself and the dogs. “Anyways, the cameras.” 

“Yes,” mumbled Ozai with a frown. “It is unusual. And yet, you haven’t managed to find a single suspect.” 

Sokka laughed nervously. He could see the family resemblance between Ozai and Azula. “Yes, well…” 

Ozai smiled at Sokka, a horrible smile. “You are a terrible detective. I should have you fired for not finding my son sooner. You are utterly incompetent. If my son is dead, I’m suing the police.” He turned away from Sokka and stared straight forward. 

Sokka found himself slack jawed and numb. He was no stranger to harsh insults, sure, but usually they originated from other detectives or perps. Never like this. Never so genuinely. Ozai spoke with the practiced ease of a cruel man. 

Sokka felt Suki sneaking glances at him the rest of the silent walk to the warehouse, but he ignored her. He set his jaw and marched. He could feel angry later. Right now, he needed to focus.

The warehouse door stood cracked open, a sliver of light coming through. Sokka led the way inside. 

A fire industry truck idled inside. A silver Saturn Ion waited by the garage door, clouds of grey smoke curling out of the exhaust. The truck’s metal door clanged shut, and two men emerged from around the back. “All done for the day, sir,” said the first man. 

“Sokka, the dog isn’t going to  _ eat _ you,” called Suki from the back of the line. “You’re on a case, quit being a baby!”

Sokka glared at her. “They have teeth.”

“You have yourselves a nice night,” said the second man, in a deeper voice. They got in the car, where a woman with cropped hair sat in the passenger seat, and drove away. 

“Employees of yours?” Sokka ventured, and Azula nodded. 

“They moved an old painting out of my room.” 

Suki stepped around the truck. “Oops, they left the truck on.” She peered up at Sokka with a fond smile. “Sounds like your kind of music, Sokka.” She brought a hand up to cover her smile. 

Sokka shrugged uncomfortably. He could still feel Ozai’s eyes on the back of his head. He climbed into the front seat of the truck, but it was unremarkable. He pulled the key out of the ignition. A D-ring connected it to a smaller key. Probably for the back of the truck, he thought. 

“You’re wasting your time,” Azula said. “Zuzu never goes in here. He sits in his room all day. You should look there.” 

“We have to consider every possibility,” said Suki with an edge in her voice. 

They argued, Azula in a voice that echoed and Suki in a restrained hiss. Sokka tuned them out, jumped out of the truck, and jumped as he found himself in front of one of the dogs. Up close, the mouthful sharp canines and unfocused eyes culminated in a hellish manifestation of his greatest fear. 

It stared up at him, tail still and ears perked, then stalked off. Sokka followed at a distance to the back of the truck. The dog sat with his tail wagging with a blue slipper in its mouth. 

“Woah, boy,” mumbled Sokka as he snapped on a rubber glove. His hand trembled violently as he inched towards the dog. “Stay…” He leaned backwards and led with his foot, then leaned forward and snatched the slipper from the dog’s jaws. “Good, good boy!” he called, already sprinting away. 

Ozai glanced at Sokka, and then fixated on the slipper. “That’s Zuko’s slipper,” he said, dumbfounded. “Where was it?” 

Sokka couldn’t help it if he puffed up his chest a little and hopped from one foot to the other on the concrete floor. Nervous energy coursed through him. “Found it by the back of the truck.” 

Suki alternated between Sokka and the half-baked argument between her and Azula, then marched to the back of the truck. “So he was in here!” She stooped down to search underneath the truck, even examining the spaces beneath the wheels, muttering to herself the entire time. Meanwhile, Sokka bagged the slipper. 

“I have the key to the truck.” 

Suki straightened up and stuck her hand out. Sokka deposited the two keys in her palm, and she muttered her thanks, eyes absent and mind hard at work.

“So what if his slipper was here,” Ozai said. “He doesn’t climb into moving trucks. My son is a sophisticated musician.” 

Suki closed her eyes and raised her eyebrows high to center herself. After a moment, she shook her head and turned back to trying out the keys. 

The lock clicked open. Suki yanked the door open, pulled a flashlight out of her bag, and beamed it inside. 

Sokka held his breath.

“It’s empty,” whispered Azula. 

Ozai turned to Sokka. “What were you honestly expecting?”

“Not expecting so much as hoping…”

“It’s  _ empty _ ,” said Azula again, cupping both hands over her mouth in a horrified steeple. 

“We’ll keep looking,” promised Suki.

Sokka climbed inside the truck, searching the walls and corners. He found nothing. 

“I have to go,” murmured Azula, turning on her high heels and sprinting back towards the house. 

“What’s her deal?” Suki grumbled, pulling out her notebook to scribble down the license plate number of the truck.

Ozai stroked the flat head of a dog, staring into the dark abyss of the truck. “She misses her brother.”

“You certainly have different ways of showing it.” Suki snapped her notebook shut and walked back around the truck, crouching down to hunt for clues. 

A dog approached Sokka, shocking him out of deep thought with a yelp. He skittered towards Suki to help her, and to get away from a stock still Ozai.

***

Sokka tried not to slam the car door. He really did. 

“We’ll find him,” Suki said. She stepped on the gas and drove them away from the house and the protestors. 

“Zuko and everyone else who’s gone missing. Something bad is happening here, and it doesn’t stop at Zuko.” 

Suki squeezed his shoulder. He peeked up at her. A scowl sat firmly on her lips. 

“I know. One of those journalists asked me why we didn’t have any leads yet. Said she’s writing an article on the horrors of Fire Industries. That we had failed everyone to protect a billionaire.” She glanced at Sokka, fire in her eyes. 

“Is she right?” 

“Fuck billionaires. I’m gonna look into this even if it gets me fired. Even if it means Ozai makes me disappear, too.”

***

A few miles away, a relatively average silver Saturn Ion drove down a busy city road. Two men and a woman sat in the front and passenger seats, talking in excited voices. 

Zuko could not decipher their words from the trunk of the car. He heard them laugh every now and then. They sounded excited. Whether Zuko’s fuge state was from the hunger, the exhaustion, the thirst, or the walls of the car, he didn’t know. After a while, he’d stopped focusing on them.

His one bare foot stung from the cold. In his struggle to get away, he’d dropped his slipper somewhere in the warehouse. The heating in the car stopped short of the trunk, and the old dog blanket tossed over him to hide his body acted as a laughable barrier against the early winter chill. The trunk stank of old shoes and pine car air freshener. His heart thumped noisy and painful in his chest. His arms felt cold because of his current position, knees to his chin and arms awkwardly tied behind his back. The rough lining of the car floor scratched at his cheek. 

All of this stood secondary to what he had heard in the warehouse. 

_ “Sokka, the dog isn’t going to  _ eat  _ you. You’re on a case, quit being a baby!”  _

Sokka was an unusual name on its own, but the dog thing confirmed it for him. Sokka, Sokka, Sokka. Finally found a way to him after all these years.

-

_ “You’re scared of dogs?”  _

_ “They have teeth and claws, and they jump!” Sokka’s eyed widened in genuine fear, a quiver in his hands laying clasped over the Batman logo on his t-shirt. _

_ “Wait…” Zuko propped himself up against the headboard, careful that his head didn’t peek over the covers. “Even puppies?”  _

_ Sokka shuddered. “Would you be scared of a baby Stalin?”  _

_ “Hey, that’s not the same!”  _

_ “Okay, okay. A baby tiger.”  _

_ Zuko laughed, and Sokka beamed at him in a goofy, uncontrollable way. “No, I wouldn’t. Would you?”  _

_ “Teeth and claws! Jumping! Tiny killing machines! Haven’t you watched Animal Planet?” Sokka spoke ardently, but even he couldn’t stop himself from breaking into a fit of giggles when Zuko laughed so hard that he slipped back onto his back and clutched his belly. Attempts to quiet one another before someone heard only fueled more giggles. _

_ They quieted, slowly. Sokka smiled at Zuko like he’d known him for years. _

_ “I’ll miss this when I go,” whispered Zuko. He reached up and tucked Sokka’s stray hair behind his ear. “I don’t want to go. Keep me here, please.” _

_ Sokka kissed him then, and held him all through the morning.  _

-

The last time Sokka and Zuko spoke, Sokka’s hair stuck at odd angles from being raked through anxiously all morning, and his bloodshot eyes betrayed a crying session. He’d hugged Zuko for a long time. 

Zuko had closed his eyes and breathed in Sokka’s scent and pretended that a minute could last a lifetime.

The sounds of traffic grew louder. Zuko relaxed as much as he could in his position and allowed starvation-induced sleep to pull him under. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my beta reader statusquo_ergo!
> 
> Come join me on my tumblr notyour--honey and talk about Zukka with me!
> 
> As always, your comments are greatly appreciated in any form! What did you think of this chapter? Your feedback helps me write better stories!


	4. Chapter 4

Suki and Sokka stepped into the precinct elevator. Sokka pressed the button for their floor and watched the doors close. 

“We’ll be extremely careful,” murmured Sokka.

“About?”

“You know.”

“Oh.” 

Sokka rolled back and forth on the balls of his heels. He fiddled with his police badge. “I’ve never disobeyed orders.”

“There aren’t technically orders to disobey.” He could hear the tremor in her voice that said, “Me neither.” 

“We’ll be fine. We’ll be careful.”

The elevator doors opened, revealing Hakoda standing tall in front of them, hands clasped behind his back. The pair nervously stepped out. 

“Commissioner Zhao wants to talk to you.” 

Suki stumbled back against the closed elevator doors. She shook her head mutely. 

Sokka stared at his feet, unable to meet his father’s gaze. 

The anger permeated the space around them in Hakoda’s ragged, frustrated breaths. He stared down at Sokka and Suki, the cold scrutiny of a parent catching their child with matches. “What did you two do?” 

“The missing workers… The security guards must have told him,” mumbled Sokka. “We’re idiots.”

“No, it could be something else.” Suki covered her face. “It could be anything else.”

“He’s in my office, and he’s waiting,” Hakoda bit out. “Whatever you two did, you need to undo it. This is not the time to play hero. Sokka, I told you to be careful, and you didn’t listen.” Sokka lifted his head. The last time Hakoda clenched his jaw this tightly was when Sokka lost a backpack full of cocaine and subsequently let a big time dealer walk free. Sokka spent a long, miserable month suspended. 

“Come on.” Sokka grabbed Suki by the arm and pulled her towards Hakoda’s office. The blind on the door’s glass pane was drawn.

“Are we gonna get fired? I can’t get fired,” whispered Suki, tears in her eyes.

Sokka couldn’t comfort her. “Come in,” called a deep voice from inside, “and shut the door.” 

Somehow, the same room Sokka had visited his father in just yesterday seemed small and suffocating now. Darkness blanketed the room corner to corner. The small tabletop lamp cast an orange light on the mahogany desk and little else. Zhao’s cologne stank. 

Suki made a beeline for a stiff sofa in front of the desk. Her legs wobbled as she collapsed into the seat.

Good thing Sokka skipped the tie today, or else he would be pulling at it. Sweat pooled under his arms. His coat made it worse. He stepped forward and sat at the edge of his seat, solemn as a man on death row.

Behind the desk, Zhao sat ruler-straight, his hands steepled in front of him. If Sokka used his detective skills to guess based off the odd quirk of his lips and the cool indifference in his eyes, he looked smug. Bastard. Zhao’s eyes flitted between the two nervous detectives in front of him the same way a cat examined trapped mice. “Detectives. I’m sure you know why I’ve come to see you.” 

Suki glanced at Sokka out of the corner of her eye. She sat still as a petrified mouse. “Sir, I’m not sure we do.” 

Zhao leaned back in Hakoda’s chair. He scrutinized Suki with a scrunch of his nose. “Alright. Where shall I begin, let’s see. You both visited Ozai Ryu’s estate today under the impression that you were going solely to advance the search for Zuko Ryu. He called me an hour ago, furious, because the two of you were seen socializing with violent rioters, maybe even adding fuel to their complaints.” 

“Violent?” Suki sat a little straighter, frowning. “They weren’t violent. We were there.” 

“Are you calling Mister Ryu and myself liars?” 

Suki bit her lip and brought her shoulders to her ears. “No! I didn’t say that.” 

“If you think we’re lying, I can show you surveillance tapes which prove my point. We have the rioters in custody now.”

Sokka closed his eyes and sunk into his chair. Sela. 

“No, sir.” 

“Sir, we apologize. We were just trying to do our jobs.”

“Your job isn’t to mingle with hooligans and offend the CEO of a multi-million dollar company with the means to sue us!” Zhao’s steepled fingers collapsed for a moment, his hands intertwining, skin pulled tight and red, fingernails dug deep into white flesh. 

Sokka put his hands up in a mini-surrender. “Sure!”

Zhao took a breath and relaxed. “This is a warning to the both of you. Stay out of Fire Industries business, or I’ll have you both suspended indefinitely. Detective Clearwater, I understand you spoke with one of the protestors personally. Give me a name.” 

Sokka met Zhao’s gaze. He used every ounce of energy in his body to mask his fear, then pursed his lips and shrugged. “Didn’t catch her name. Don’t you have everything on tape?” 

Zhao smiled. “Unfortunately, the estate misplaced an hour’s worth of tapes. It happens.” 

Sokka stared at Zhao and scoffed. “Right. It happens.” 

Zhao dropped his smile. “You are both dismissed.”

Suki jumped to her feet the moment Zhao finished his sentence. She grabbed Sokka by the arm and dragged him out of the office with her, shutting the door with her foot. 

“Suki, my arm—” 

“Oh!” Suki released her metal grip on his arm. “Sorry. That guy gives me the creeps. Did you know he used to be military?”

Sokka half listened, too busy reeling in terror. “We could’ve been suspended just because we talked to them.” Not only would he have cost Suki her job, but he would’ve embarrassed his father, a police captain, in front of everyone. The idea that his actions could have such gruesome consequences gave him a stomachache.

“We just have to be quieter. Hey, don’t get all freaked out on me here,” begged Suki, who was fine with being the panicked one for once. “We still have a case to solve. I’m gonna start looking through the new tapes we pulled, although if it’s so easy to ‘lose’ tapes, I doubt I’ll find anything.” 

Sokka nodded. He pulled his coat off and draped it over the back of his chair. He opened his backpack and pulled files out, starting with the warrant to enter the warehouse. He paused. He thought back to their trip to the warehouse, the Cinderella-esque clue they’d brought back with them. “Wait… Suki?”

“Yeah?”

“You remember that car we saw in the warehouse?”

“I remember.”

“Pull the plates and track it down.”

Suki frowned. “The employees? Why?”

“It’s gonna sound really silly.”

“I’ll entertain silly.”

Sokka slid into his seat and picked up a pen, which he played with as he slowly spoke. “When I grabbed the slipper from that dog, it wasn’t really cold. It was hot, even. Like when you take off shoes you’ve had on for too long. I guess I didn’t notice before.” He frowned, thinking. “It’s minus eight outside, and the shoe has a rubber tread. It should’ve been cold to the touch.”

“Someone was wearing the slipper! Oh, and… Then the moving truck employees!” Suki clapped her hands in delight. “They have Zuko! An alive Zuko! They’re keeping him alive, oh good…”

He smiled. “Exactly. They were the only ones who would’ve been there in that timespan. I remember their faces… I’ll find where they live, and you find the car. We’ll find these bastards in no time.” 

***

“Tell me what we know again. There’s gotta be something in there.” 

Suki groaned and pressed her face into her hands. They’d moved into the conference room five hours ago, flinging tidbits of information back and forth like pinball machines. She turned back to the whiteboard and began to read in an exhausted drone.

“Okay, we found the car. A silver 2005 Saturn Ion. It’s rented to our friend here, Duke,” she gestured to the taped ID photo of a man with thick brows and a stern expression. “Duke was at the warehouse driving the moving truck, but he doesn’t work for Fire Industries. He was a private investigator for six years, then quit eleven years ago. He was good, too. His last known case before he lost his license, he was investigating Ozai Ryu for the death of his wife. This connects him to Ozai, but only from back then. Now he works as a security guard two hours north of here. Work says he hasn’t shown up in a week, so he was reported missing four days ago. His last known address was searched and found professionally cleaned, down to a lack of fingerprints. He’s an expert who knows how to cover his tracks.” She pointed at two red question marks scribbled onto the board. “Duke was accompanied by a man, and another person acted as their getaway driver. We would know where they went if Ozai hadn’t, well.” 

“If he hadn’t erased  _ all _ the tapes for those twenty minutes.” Sokka pinched the bridge of his nose hard. 

“Couldn’t find the car anywhere. He either switched his plates or drove through blind spots.”

“Or both.”

“Or both,” Suki agreed. 

“So we have a ghost.” Sokka tugged at the delicate skin of his under eyes and stared up at the white ceiling. 

“Yeah. But I put out an APB for the car, and our shifts ended an hour ago. We’ve done all we can. Did you ask about Sela?”

“They found an error in her residency papers and she’s being held at a different facility. Bullshit, if you ask me. She’s married and her husband worked by contract.”

Suki smiled at the floor, eyes downcast. “They’re silencing her.”

Her words hung thick between them. Sokka knew taking on Sela’s case would be trouble. He just never thought it would be trouble for her.

Suki glanced at the wall clock. “I have to go, Sokka.” She began to collect her things from the conference table, tossing them one by one into her leather laptop bag. 

Sokka raised an eyebrow. “Where to?”

She smiled up at him. “I’ve got a dinner date. One of my sisters set me up, and I’ve got a good feeling.” 

“Oh. Have fun.” Dating, seeing people outside of work… Sokka couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that. 

“Thanks!” Suki shouldered her bag, waved at Sokka, and left the conference room. 

Sokka sat alone and listened to the clock tick. 

Taunting. Time, the greatest antagonist in any case, doing its job without fail and running out. He only knew that his suspect was someone who knew how to catch criminals. Someone who knew how to cheat the system from the inside. Someone who knew his every move, because they’d been a detective too.

He packed his things and left. 

***

Sokka’s apartment became frigid in the nighttime because of a crack in the ceiling he’d meant to fix a month ago. The temporary solution, plastic wrap taped in place, worked poorly. The steps leading to his front door creaked as he stepped on them. He unlocked the door, stepped inside, and flicked on the lightswitch. One of the lightbulbs, the one in the kitchen, buzzed and flickered a moment. A problem for another day. He dropped his keys in the empty fruit bowl on the kitchen counter and leaned down to rummage through his fridge. 

He pulled out a box of leftover chicken fried rice from the Chinese place down the street and settled at his wooden table. Sokka kept his place neat and clean. Clutter clouded his mind, and if he couldn’t think, he couldn’t work. 

Sokka’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He set down the container of cold rice and fished the phone out. Katara. He swallowed, pressed answer, and held the phone up to his ear. “Hello?”

“He finally answers!” Katara sounded overjoyed. 

“Sorry, I got caught up in a case.” Not totally a lie.

He heard a shuffle on Katara’s end, then baby Bumi’s coos. “I tried to call you on the anniversary, but you never picked up. You okay?”

Sokka chewed a mouthful of rice before he spoke. “Fine. Didn’t wanna think about it. Had a drink and went to bed.”

“Sokka, you know you can talk to me.”

“I know.”

“And that I need to talk to  _ you _ sometimes.” There was something held back in her voice. Sokka decided it had to be either anger or frustration. Katara had a temper.

A pang of guilt. He pushed the takeout away. “Sorry.”

“So tell me about this case!” The restraint was gone from her voice. Quick to anger, quick to forgive. 

“Oh, erm… Do you remember Zuko?” He spoke softly now, protective of the name. 

“Sure, Zuko. Never liked him very much.”

“He was kidnapped yesterday. Suki and I have been on his case.”

“Really? Oh Bumi, no, that’s not a toy.” Her voice moved away for a moment, as though she’d set the phone down, and Sokka could hear her speaking to the baby in a gentle reprimanding tone. “Sorry,” she said, the phone back to her ear. “How’s the search?”

Sokka paused. “You know, not as bad as it could be. We know who has him and the car they took him in. We’re looking for him now.” 

“What about his sister, did they kidnap her too?”

“Azula? No.” 

“Ugh. I hated her even more. She used to put spiders in our cereal boxes, remember? I literally remember watching her going outside early in the morning to find the biggest ones. She was such a teacher’s pet in front of dad. Too smart for her own good.” 

Sokka remembered. Of everyone in the house, Zuko was most afraid she would find out about his relationship with Sokka, a sentiment he voiced constantly. He was scared she would hurt Sokka. She’d cut the heads off of Katara’s favourite dolls. “She didn’t recognize me, you know.”

“Well, you grew two feet and facial hair, and you don’t sound like a five year old girl anymore.” Katara spoke in a ridiculous high pitched voice, “Katara! Don’t you know this is a  _ boys’  _ room? Leave at once!” 

“Hey, I did not sound like that!” 

Katara laughed at the other end. Sokka smiled. If he closed his eyes, he could pretend she was next to him.

“Hey Katara?”

“Yeah?”

“She still gives me the creeps. Her and her creepy murder dad.”

“You and Zuko were good friends, though. This must be hard for you.” 

Her words hit him like a bowling ball, dizzying and hard. “I… Yeah.” He chewed his lower lip. 

“You were so miserable when he didn’t respond to your emails.”

“He was my friend. He’ll always be my friend.” Sokka snorted and picked at the peeling paint on his table. “Besides, email chains I examined between him and his uncle showed me that he is one dry fucker. Ends all his emails with ‘regards, Zuko’.” 

“I liked his uncle,” Katara said softly. “He brought Zuko his toys and that picture of his mother.”

Sokka remembered the picture. Ursa beaming at the camera with Zuko in her lap, set in a sky blue frame. It once stood on his bedside table. “I think he was the only grown up that really cared about Zuko other than his mom.” 

“Like our dad.”

Sokka slumped into his chair and smiled. “Yeah. Hey, how are Aang and Bumi?” 

“Well, Bumi hit a new milestone. He can walk ten solid steps without help. Aang says that isn’t a milestone, but I count it.” 

Sokka closed his eyes. He missed his nephew. With Aang’s job as a diplomat, they rarely got to spend time together. Bumi could only crawl the last time Sokka saw him. “And Aang?”

“He’s good. Busy, but good. This morning he finally had a few free hours and took us to this amazing Malaysian breakfast place. Sokka, the amount of fruit you can choose from!” 

Sokka hummed. “He’s taking care of himself?”

“Oh yeah. I make him.”

“And you’re taking care of yourself.”

“Of course I am. I’ve got a full service nursery for Bumi over here. Are you?”

Sokka shrugged. “Of course.” 

“Oh— Sokka, I have to go, Bumi spit up all over me. Call me soon?”

“Will do.” The phone clicked off in Sokka’s ear. He set it down and sighed. 

Too quiet here. Maybe some music would help. He pulled his laptop out of his backpack and opted for some early 2000’s pop. Screw Suki. It was nostalgic. 

He closed Spotify and clicked on the spreadsheet he’d created yesterday containing the financial breakdown out Ozai’s business. Well, he had nothing better to do than quadruple check his work. Bored, he scrolled down again, examining the years and the rise in profit. Numbers made sense. Numbers were easy for Sokka. 

Ten years, eleven, twelve… Sokka paused at twelve. Something strange happened between twelve and thirteen years ago. Eight million dollars appeared and funneled its way into the company. Highly unlikely that such a staggering amount had been overlooked, not so early on in Fire Industries’ history. They’d reported five hundred thousand dollars in profit that year.

Twelve years ago. Sokka frowned. That was when Ryu’s wife died. 

Sokka hummed along to Britney Spears and opened up Google. He typed something in and hit search. A Wikipedia page popped up. He opened it. 

Ursa Ryu, maiden name Han, born into a rich family of textile producers. She’d entered the marriage incredibly wealthy, while Ozai was just getting his company into the public eye. 

Sokka had a hunch. He got up and walked to his room, past the untouched bed, and snatched his father’s notes off the bedside table. He walked back to the kitchen table and sifted through the file, until he finally located a replicated copy of Ursa’s will. She officiated it a year before her death, and granted eighty percent of her wealth to her husband. Eight million dollars. The remaining two million was split into trust funds for Azula and Zuko. She’d given everything to her family.

This explained why Ozai’s case caused such divisiveness. Sokka knew that Ozai killed his wife, and the will gave him good reason. To a jury, however, he seemed like a poor young widower whose wife carried a history of depression and whose son channeled grief into an overactive imagination. 

Sokka scrawled a note for himself on the corner of the will. The doorbell rang. He twisted towards the kitchen. The neon numbers on his microwave read nine o’clock. His father never visited without calling. Sokka paused his music and slowly got to his feet. He glanced through the peephole. With a relieved sigh, he opened the door for Suki. “Hey. I thought you were on a date.” 

Suki shrugged. She’d done her hair and put on dark lipstick and a forest green dress. “It was going fine, then she dropped that ‘I’m just experimenting’ shit on me.” 

Sokka cringed. Suki shoved inside. “I’m sorry,” said Sokka. “At least you can add her to the list. What does that make this, the third time?” 

Suki snorted a laugh. “Fourth, actually. Anyways, I just wanted to stop by on my way home to make sure you’re eating, which,” she paused and leaned sideways to peer at the sad box of takeout behind the laptop, “I guess you kind of are. Are you still working?”

“Yeah. I found out that Ozai got $8,000 from his wife’s will.” 

“His wife? Why are you looking into that?” Suki circled around the table, squinting at the strewn about papers. “Is this your note? ‘Look at will?’”

“Well, it’s the last place to look.” 

“Yeah, because she’s  _ dead _ .” Suki’s head whipped up. Her eyes narrowed. “Sokka, this isn’t you projecting, is it?” 

Sokka inhaled, sharp. He shook his head. 

“Sit beside me. We need to talk.” She sat at the table and reached down to unclasp her heels as Sokka inched back to the table and into his seat. She dropped her clutch on the table. He hunched over, eyes trained on his lap. Getting sense knocked into you by Suki could sometimes be too literal, and he would be a liar if he said he wasn’t a tiny bit scared of her. 

“Hey.” Sokka met Suki’s eyes, gentle and inviting. Suki spoke in a soft voice: “I know you wanna save her. I think I’m slowly starting to understand why, little by little. But Sokka, you’ve gotta know, you couldn’t have stopped what happened to your mother. You were eight, and that man had a gun.” 

Sokka flinched. “You don’t understand anything.”

“I understand that you feel angry.”

“I’m not angry that I didn’t save her. I’m angry that I never got justice. Zuko never got justice, either. One of us should.”

Suki leaned back and crossed her arms. 

“I want to look at Ozai’s will, and I want to see where his money goes when he dies.” 

“Fine. Why do you care so much?”

“What?” Sokka rubbed his eye with a fist. “It’s a case, of course I care. The commissioner is corrupt and we need to put an end to it.”

“No,” said Suki in that same soft voice. She smiled, shrugged, and stated in a matter-of-fact tone, “You care a lot about Zuko. When you talk about him, I don’t know, your body language changes. You panic, you ramble.” 

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sokka stared past Suki and yawned. “I’m just tired. The commissioner, this case, it’s all getting to me.” 

Suki tilted her head in question. “Did you know him?” 

“He… You… So what if I did?” His eyes widened. He didn’t mean to say that. 

“Wait,” Suki began as a frown slowly spread across her face, “you actually knew him? I was kidding! Why the fuck didn’t you tell me!”

“Because it doesn’t matter!” His voice cracked on the last word. Frustrated, he pushed his face into his cupped hands and curled into himself. “It was over ten years ago.”

“Tell me.” No kindness remained. Sokka’s heartbeat sped up. 

“He lived with us for a month when his dad was on trial for murder. His mom had just died, and my dad offered to take him in. He used to foster kids with my mom when Katara and I were much younger, so they let him.”

“Were you close?” 

“Yes. Incredibly. We were joined at the hip.” The angry slant of Suki’s brows made his stomach churn with guilt. “I was heartbroken when he left.”

Suki swallowed, and her frown faltered a little. Heartbroken implied something specific. Her gaze flickered. She wet her lips anxiously. “Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“Because I haven’t spoken to him since he left. He was untraceable. I tried to find him for years. I emailed him, I looked him up in the yellow pages. I had to leave that month in the past so I could move on. Anyways, I don’t know anything that can help us with the case.”

“He was being monitored,” she realized. “That explains why his emails were so stinted, and why he had no personal messages or social media.”

The two were silent. The living room clock ticked uncomfortably loud.

Suki leaned down, slipped her heels back on, and fastened the clasps. She snatched up her clutch and got to her feet. “You’ve lost objectivity,” she said, and hesitated. “I think you should ask to be taken off of this case.” 

“Come on, Suki.”

She glared. “You’re opening up an old case that the top detectives in the country combed through and found nothing because you have a hero complex and a connection to the case.” 

“I’m fixing a mistake.” 

“You are  _ making _ a mistake. Sokka, this case is bigger than you and Zuko. People are missing now. You’re too close to this. You obviously had feelings for him, and you’re obviously still in love with him.” She shook her head. “If you’re smart, you’ll listen to me. I’ll see you in the morning.” 

She left before he could deny it. Only he couldn’t deny it. Sokka sucked at lying. A day didn’t pass when he didn’t think about the haunted boy who only smiled when they were alone, and called for his mother in his sleep.

He heard Suki’s car start up and drive off, then walked into the kitchen on wobbly legs. From a cat-shaped cookie jar on top of the fridge, he pulled out a pack of Newports, saved for emergencies after he quit five years ago. He stuck a cigarette behind his ear and searched the drawers for a lighter. Then he grabbed his phone and jacket and walked onto his front porch.

The wind blew out his flame the first few tries. He swore and flicked the lighter over and over again, gasping when he slid his thumb on the hot metal gear. It finally caught, and that first deep drag relaxed him to his core. He sat on the front steps of his house. 

Sokka liked his house. Liked how it sat off any main roads, and how his neighbours weren’t stuck to his property. Hard to find in Toronto, and crazy expensive, but worth it. Nights like these, when he stewed in anger and misery and found his mind drifting to the image of his mother lying dead on the kitchen floor, he could sit outside, stare at the moon, shut up, and smoke. Maybe even cry. No one was around to see. Better than therapy.

Sokka finished his cigarette and ground it beneath his heel. Once the nicotine wore off, he could feel awful about how angry Suki felt and realize he’d never seen her quiet and mad at the same time. He could realize how obvious it became now why, that year Suki admitted a crush on him, he’d turned her down. A decade ago. That sort of pain never died of old age. He could understand how deeply he hurt Suki by lying to her and assuming she cared less about the case than him. For now, this remained all surface level realization, paper-cutting his thoughts in gentle epiphany. No sorrow could touch him. 

He pulled his jacket closer around himself. Everyone was angry at him, and he felt no inclination to shut himself up enough that they would calm down. Sokka Clearwater did not back down from a case before it was done. He itched for another cigarette. He still had a few unforgivable ideas in mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who's the jerk NOW Sokka! 
> 
> I recognize the start of this story has been mainly plot; this is a slow burn in that sense. I promise that the Zukka content is coming! it'll be worth it hehe
> 
> As always, thank you to my beta reader statusquo_ergo!
> 
> Come join me on my tumblr notyour--honey and talk about Zukka with me! seriously i'm ready to write a one shot between chapters of this fic and I am itching for inspiration
> 
> As always, your comments are greatly appreciated in any form! What did you think of this chapter? Your feedback helps me write better stories!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> folks we take a deep dive into sokka's insecurities here and finally catch up with zuko!!! this chapter was so much fun to write

Sokka woke up in yesterday’s rumpled clothes at six in the morning, before the sun rose, with a musty taste in his mouth and crust in his eyes. He sat up, the bed groaning, and smacked his lips together. He grabbed an old plastic water bottle off his bedside table and chugged it down, liquid the temperature of piss. He dropped the empty bottle back onto the table. A dull headache throbbed behind his eyes. Last night’s sleep was so restless that it merely acted as a means of transporting him to the future rather than restoring him after his argument with Suki. 

He’d dreamt of walking through a house of mirrors, each mirror becoming more distorted than the next until shards of glass flew out of the mirrors and pierced his eyes, his palms, his throat. Time became a thing he could taste, something sour and miserable and hard to swallow. All of the uncomfortable feelings he’d been trying to suppress for the sake of the case wormed their way back into his mind and settled in his unconscious, leaving in their wake a slime trail of horrible, stomach-churning emotions. 

He wouldn’t feel better until he’d solved this case. Sokka rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, scratching at week-old stubble. He couldn’t solve this case without his partner. That would be his first destination, then. 

Hungry and exhausted, Sokka stumbled into the bathroom to shower. Upon turning the lights on and finding that they burned his eyes, he decided to shower in the dark. He scrubbed at his hair and thoroughly tangled it in his rush. He hung his wet towel on his bedroom door knob and pulled out clothes; the first pair of jeans he found, a thick blue button up, and white tennis socks. He dressed, combed out his knots, and threw his parka over his shoulders. He snatched his keys out of the fruit bowl and locked the front door behind him.

Suki still lived with her adopted mother in a big, armoured house with all her sisters. Sokka had only visited Suki a handful of times since highschool ended, but as he drove nearer, he noted that it looked the same; giant tinted windows, brick, artfully designed. Skillfully guarded. The house of someone who needed protection. 

A black iron gate barred entry from the front door. Sokka rolled down his window and stared into the little black intercom box. A static noise briefly buzzed as the red light camera blinked on. The metal gate clanked open a moment later. Sokka drove through the opening and parked in the gravel driveway. He heard the metal gate click shut in the distance as he walked up to the front door and rapped on it twice. He hoped Suki would answer, or one of her sisters, or anyone other than Suki’s mother. 

The door swung open. A tired woman towered over him, her long black hair gathered in a sloppy bun on top of her head. Kyoshi Tessen in the terrifying flesh. 

“ _ You _ ,” she hissed. 

“You’re looking gorgeous as ever, Mrs. Tessen,” Sokka squeaked. 

“You fucked up.” She stepped aside, and Sokka darted in, careful not to brush up against her. Even in a pink bathrobe, she petrified him. Suki inherited her steel will from someone, after all. 

Sokka winced, standing with the limp body language of a puppy being reprimanded. “Is it that bad?”

Kyoshi scoffed. “She’s in the kitchen. She just came back from her run. I have to be at a meeting in an hour, so I can’t stay long, but whatever you did, fix it,” she said in a non-negotiable tone. 

“Got it.” Sokka followed her to the kitchen. He could hear the murmur of voices and the sizzle of a stove, and the savoury scent of fried eggs. He poked his head in and stopped mid-step. 

All six of Suki’s sisters milled about the kitchen. One stood at the stove, ten eggs on a giant skillet in front of her. Two of them wore in business attire, seated at the table and hunched over one laptop. One flopped half asleep over the table in her pajamas and a topknot; the youngest, still in college. The last two stood next to Suki in jogging attire, sandwiching her and freezing once Sokka entered the kitchen. 

Suki regarded Sokka with a cold, blank expression. He gave her a lame wave. All seven pairs of eyes trained on him, Kyoshi standing behind him like a bouncer with her arms crossed. He felt cornered, like a deer to a pack of wolves, acutely aware that everyone in the room was an expert in martial arts, marksmanship, street fighting, archery, or wrestling. In the case of Kyoshi, all of the above. Suki didn’t need protective older brothers; she kept a small militia for a family.

“Hi.” His voice cracked. He snatched his own still waving hand down lest he too closely resemble a lucky cat figurine.

“Well?” asked Suki, scowling at him. She may have been adopted, but she bore an uncanny resemblance to Kyoshi in posture and temperament. 

Sokka swallowed, peering down at his feet. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

“Louder!” one of the sisters called, amused.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I was awful.”

“And?” 

Sokka whipped around to the source of the sound, a tickled Kyoshi. Clearly, Sokka’s public humiliation was a joyous spectacle for all the Tessen family members. “Well, I guess… I’m sorry I lied to you. I should’ve told you everything about Zuko.” He scratched at his calf with his foot, awkwardly scanning the kitchen. “Could we get some privacy? This is kind of confidential stuff. We could get in trouble.”

“What, like going behind the commissioner’s back is small fries?” Suki crossed the kitchen in three strides and grabbed Sokka by the arm, dragging him to the living room. She sat on one overstuffed couch, and Sokka perched on the edge of his seat across from her. She tucked a sweaty strand of hair behind her ear and hunched over her legs, towards Sokka. “You fucked up.”

“So everyone keeps telling me.”

“You were a prick and you didn’t tell me important case details,” she huffed. She stared into Sokka’s eyes with the intensity of an angry bull, a scowl marring her lips. “I’m gonna forgive you, though.”

Sokka perked up. “Thank you.”

Suki hummed. “You may be crazy obsessed with this Zuko guy, but that obsession got us somewhere. I got a copy of Ozai’s will last night.”

Sokka leaned forward, intrigued. “How’d you get that?”

“I asked him. He’s surprisingly compliant, you know. Sketchy as he seems. Anyways, I might have found something. You were right. You made the right call.” 

“Fuck yeah!” Sokka grinned, drumming the tops of his legs in excitement. He could count on one hand the amount of times he had been right and Suki had been wrong. 

“Hey. You’re not off the hook.”

Sokka stopped, pouting. “I thought I was forgiven!” 

“Don’t have to be such a baby,” she grumbled, leaning across the table between them to swat his arm. “You’re forgiven for being obsessed with this guy and withholding information from the case, because it led to a promising lead. You aren’t forgiven for withholding information from  _ me. _ ”

“Are detective Suki and non-detective Suki different people?” Sokka offered Suki a smile, which she returned with a deadpan expression. 

“Sokka. I’m trying to be serious here.” Suki scooted forward, and Sokka’s smile fell. “You have a horrible habit of not telling the people you love when you’re hurting. You do it to me, to your sister, to your dad, and I’ll bet you do it with all your friends. You need to stop. It isn’t noble, and it doesn’t make us worry less. We can see that you’re hurting from a mile away.” 

Sokka felt his face grow red, burning his ears with embarrassment. His mouth opened and closed mutely, words difficult to form in the face of such blunt confrontation. “I don’t wanna burden anyone. You have your sisters to look after, Katara has Bumi and a diplomat for a husband, and my dad is widower and a police captain. I don’t want to put my problems on you guys.”

“Are you kidding me?” Suki placed a hand on his arm, her gaze steady. “We’ve known each other what, eight years now? I can be honest. You lost your mom and you never got through it properly, and that  _ hurts _ . I can’t even begin to understand how that feels.”

“You lost your birth family and you got over it,” Sokka pointed out.

Suki shrugged. “I never met them, and I never cared to. I have a family. I have friends like you. You’re like a brother to me, Sokka. I care for you. But if you don’t talk to me, then I can’t be a part of your life. I want to be there for you, and that includes the parts that hurt. Every day, I watch my best friend retreat further and further into the shell of his old self. I wanna help you back into the light.” 

Sokka couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes. That would be too much at once. Every word coming out of Suki’s mouth hit him in his chest, in those old emotions he’d tried to suppress, until his lip quivered and tears streamed down to his stubbly jaw. 

“Shit,” mumbled Suki, reaching beside the sofa. She plucked up a few tissues and offered them to Sokka, who gratefully snatched them and scrubbed his eyes. 

He sniffled, shaking his head as though to will the tears away. “This might take a while.” Sokka laughed, glancing up at Suki with red eyes. 

She smiled. “Have you eaten breakfast yet?”

Sokka shook his head.

“I’m gonna get us coffee and eggs.” Suki stood up and walked to the kitchen. Sokka appreciated the few minutes alone this gave him to gather his thoughts and dry his face. 

She walked back in, balancing a tray of scrambled eggs, white bread, and coffee. “You know,” she started, “I could tell something was up with you as soon as you opened that case file.”

“What do you mean?” Sokka held a cup of coffee with two eager hands, immediately burning his tongue when he tried to drink it. 

Suki sat down with the tray between them. “You and Katara look alike. She gets that same look in her eyes when she looks at Aang. Also, you rub your neck a lot and look around when you talk about him. You are not a good liar, Detective Clearwater.” 

“I am too!” Sokka shoveled a hot forkful of eggs in his mouth. Hot meals were hard to come by when you buried yourself in work and didn’t carve out time to cook. 

Suki shook her head. “When we went to the Ryu estate the first time, and you came back from his room, your face was all red. You weren’t listening to a word I said. What did you see that made you all flustered, anyways?”

Sokka smiled fondly and sipped his coffee. “I had a stuffed lemur when I was a kid, something my dad gave me when I was really young. I gave it to Zuko before he left. When I walked in his room that day, it was on his bed, perched against his pillow, just like I used to have it on my bed. He kept it all this time.” 

Suki didn’t speak for a moment, considering his statement. “He slept in your bed?” 

Sokka choked on his eggs. “I never said that!” 

“You make your bed right after waking up, neat freak.”

“He could’ve walked into my room during the day.”

“Maybe. If you hadn’t reacted the way you did when I asked, I would’ve even believed that,” she said with a cheeky smile. “So did your dad know?”

“My dad thinks I’m straight,” said Sokka, staring down at the plate of food now with greatly feigned interest. 

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?” 

“He knows about me, and he’s completely fine with it. Why haven’t you told him?”

Sokka shrugged, and Suki groaned. 

“You and your fucking secrets, Sokka.”

“I don’t like burdening people!” he groaned. 

“Knowing your dad, he’ll wanna throw you a party.” She grinned, pointing her fork at Sokka. “Besides, if Zuko really kept that toy, then I assume he’s gonna be all over you when you guys reunite.”

“If,” Sokka said softly.

“No,” insisted Suki, sipping her coffee, “I said when, and I meant it. We’re going to find him.” She downed the last of her coffee and stood up. “I’m gonna go shower. I’ll be back.”

“Are we carpooling?”

“Hell no. You drive like an old lady. I wanna actually get to work on time.”

“You drive like a teenager!” 

“Separate cars then.” Suki stuck her tongue out at Sokka and walked away. Engrossed with his eggs, Sokka didn’t notice Kyoshi walk into the living room until she cleared her throat. He dropped his fork, and it clattered onto the glass pane of the coffee table.

“I assume you two made up.”

Sokka swallowed and nodded. “We’re all good.” 

“You’ve got a little something…” She pointed to her chin. Sokka furiously wiped his burning face as Kyoshi sat in front of him. She still wore her pink dressing gown, but she’d put on a full face of makeup so severe and sharp that she looked like a different person entirely. She’d brushed her hair, half of it tied loosely atop her head like a silk crown while the other half cascaded to her waist. The dichotomy alarmed Sokka, but she terrified him in any apparel. 

Sokka sat up straight. “Ma’am?” 

“Let me tell you a story.”

“About what?”

“When I was a special agent for the FBI, I met a girl. She was a forensic scientist in the homicide unit. I worked with her for six years. I fell in love with her, and it was obvious to everyone around us that she was in love with me too.” Kyoshi picked up Suki’s coffee cup to sip what remained. “I thought about her day and night. Everything I did, I wanted to do with her. Even days when I did nothing, I wanted to do nothing with her.” Kyoshi smiled wistfully. “Do you know what happened to her, Sokka?”

Sokka almost didn’t want to know. “What happened?”

Kyoshi leaned in close, whispering so that Sokka strained his ears to listen. 

Sokka closed his eyes.

“One day, in the middle of investigating a string of cannibalistic homicides, I told her I loved her. A year later, I proposed. We adopted seven beautiful girls together, moved to Canada, and retired.”

Sokka let out a breath. “You scared me!”

“Love is scary. You want to protect people, so you loiter in the outskirts of their lives like a watchdog and hope they see you. You tell yourself it’s for their own good, but you’re really just a coward. I did that for six years and accomplished nothing.” Kyoshi frowned at Sokka. “Suki tells me you still love him.”

Sokka hesitated before nodding. “I do,” he whispered. 

“Does he love you?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. He was cut off from the world for over a decade, and now I’m terrified we might not even find him.”

Kyoshi’s face grew empathetic. “When you find him, you’ll know. Some bonds are too strong to be broken by time and distance. Whatever you do, Sokka, don’t let him slip away because you were too scared. Let him know you.” 

Sokka heard a creak on the staircase behind him and turned around. 

A woman with long brown hair in forest green pajamas padded downstairs, dragging her hand down the bannister with half opened eyes. She wore red muppet slippers and leaned from side to step with each exhausted step. She entered the kitchen to a chorus of good mornings. Sokka glanced back at Kyoshi in front of him, who beamed like she’d seen an angel walk by and not a lady with dried drool on her cheek. 

“I’ll do it. I’ll do my best.” 

Kyoshi waggled her brows and said, “Bring the boy around, I want to meet him. You’ve known my Suki eight years and never had a boyfriend or girlfriend you actually liked.” 

“Well, there was…” Sokka grew panicked. “There was definitely one!”

“Mm, I’m sure.” Kyoshi rose as Suki bounded down the stairs, hair towel dried and work clothes on. 

“Clearwater, let’s head out!” 

Sokka downed the rest of his coffee, stuck a piece of toast in his mouth, and waved goodbye to Kyoshi. She made a motion with her two fingers to say that she had her eyes on him. 

The duo walked outside into the crisp morning cold. The sun was just coming up. 

***

_ Drip. Drip. Drip.  _

Zuko focused on the sound, the metallic plink of water. He pressed his lips tight around the gag. A pain blossomed on the back of his head, blood thumping beneath his skull. He opened his eyes, groggy, and his eyelashes brushed against his blindfold. At least he was sitting up now; he felt the frozen floor on the backs of his thighs. His muscles ached from his restraints. 

Footsteps approached him. “Take his blindfold off, Christ’s sake.” 

Big hands pulled the cloth off his face. The stench of rotten wet paper permeated the air around him. He blinked a few times to adjust his eyes in the darkness. 

Three people crouched down in front of him: a tall woman with clipped brown hair and red striped face tattoos, a man easily twice Zuko’s height and width, and a slim man with intense eyebrows. The man with the eyebrows sat closest to Zuko, and he spoke first. “You want some water?”

Zuko considered this. He felt so thirty the insides of his ears burned and his tongue felt like sandpaper, but these people had kidnapped him. Willing to test his fate, Zuko hesitantly nodded. The woman reached behind his head and untied his gag with nimble fingers, then brought a steel water bottle to his lips. Zuko tipped his head all the way back to gulp down every drop of water. The woman set the bottle down. 

“You’re probably wondering what’s going on,” the man with the eyebrows said.

“It would be weird if I wasn’t,” said Zuko in a voice that he hadn’t used in two days. 

The man with the eyebrows nodded, sitting cross legged on the ground. “I’ll bet those restraints hurt.”

_ They’re gonna fucking kill me, how the fuck did I get in this situation, I can’t feel my arms. _ “They’re alright.”

“Once I explain, we’ll take them off.” 

Maybe if Zuko had more energy, he would’ve considered lunging forward to bite the man, but starving and exhausted, and slowly realizing that he must have been drugged, he couldn’t muster the energy. How much time had passed? Where  _ was _ he?

“I guess I’ll start from the beginning. My name’s Duke, and these are my partners, Smellerbee and Pipsqueak.”

Zuko scrunched up his nose. “Those your real names?”

“No,” grumbled Smellerbee.

“Alright.”

“Eleven years ago, we were all private eyes. There were four of us, including Jet.” The man paused, sinking into himself. He looked small. “We were hired directly after the murder of Ursa Ryu.”

“My mother,” supplied Zuko.

“Yes. After your father was found innocent, someone anonymously hired us to reopen the investigation. Your father threatened us to drop the case, or there would be consequences. Not listening to him is my greatest regret in life.” 

“It wasn’t our fault,” said Pipsqueak, frowning. “We didn’t know what he meant by consequences. We thought he would call the cops.”

Zuko’s gaze shifted lazily between the three. “My father is a horrible man.”

The trio mumbled sounds of agreement. 

“It was a hit and run,” said Duke. “I got access to the city cameras later. Nothing. Someone had wiped them. All we know is it was a truck.”

“Truck?” Zuko closed his eyes, feeling sorry for the poor man who’d had the misfortune of coming into Ozai’s life. 

“Big semi truck. Paralyzed him instantly. He died on the way to the hospital.”

“Fuck,” whispered Zuko. 

“After that, not only did we have to drop the case, we had to quit our jobs entirely. And we were good at our jobs,” insisted Pipsqueak. “That’s why he had to get rid of us!”

“He would’ve come for our families next,” said Smellerbee. 

“So eleven years passed, and we didn’t hear a word from him. In fact, the three of us had moved to find work. Last week, the three of us got an identical email from Fire Industries. He wanted us to kill you, dispose of your body, and then bring him your heart. Real Snow White shit. The details were complicated, but that was the gist of it.”

Zuko frowned. He knew his father hated him, but murder? “My father said that?”

“Does he use Fire Industries as his email?”

“Well, yes, but… How did you know it was him?” 

“Because,” said Pipsqueak, “the day after that, I woke up to find a Fire Industries shipping truck parked outside my house, keys in the mail slot and three uniforms on the seat. A copy of the email had been printed out and put in the glove compartment, screenshotted from the sender.”

“We didn’t have a choice,” protested Smellerbee. “He killed Jet, who knows who he was gonna kill next!”

“Jet was everything to us,” sniffled Duke. “We all went to the academy together, and left the force together to pursue private investigation. We’d known him almost twenty years.”

“He was like a big brother,” said Pipsqueak.

Zuko frowned. “You didn’t kill me, though. Did the plan change?”

“We changed the plan,” said Duke, puffing up his chest. “We’re sick and tired of Ozai ruining our lives. We all know how to cover our tracks. We have a new plan.”

“It relies mostly on you,” said Smellerbee.

Zuko blinked, and squeaked, “Me?” 

Duke leaned forward, speaking close enough that Zuko could feel his hot breath. Zuko’s heart thumped hard and heavy against his ribs. “We know your father killed your mother. We have incriminating evidence. If you help us, we’ll give you the file that’ll put him away for good. You scratch our backs, we scratch yours, everyone gets what they want.” Duke waved a black thumb drive in Zuko’s face.

“Help you do what?” Zuko’s breath hitched, eyes wide and excited and focused on the thumb drive.

“Help us get out of the country.” 

Zuko nodded furiously. “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” 

Duko held up a black burner phone. “First, you need to make a phone call. I’ll tell you exactly what to say.”

***

Suki and Sokka entered the precinct twenty minutes later. Hakoda met them at Sokka’s desk. “Good morning, detectives. I have a lead on your car.” 

Suki and Sokka exchanged an excited look. “Where is it?” asked Suki, whipping out her phone to note the address. 

Sokka sat down behind his desk and hesitantly picked up the phone. The message light blinked. He pressed the handpiece to his ear and pressed play. 

“This is Azula. You need to call me the moment you get this message and tell me if you’ve found my brother. If you don’t find him, I’ll see to it that you both get fired!” The line clicked dead in his ear. Sokka slowly set the phone back in its cradle, hiding his annoyance behind a grimace. When she wasn’t speaking to him face to face, he could really pick apart her condescending language and understand how much of a spoiled brat she was. 

“Azula called.” Hakoda and Suki both looked at Sokka. “Angry that we haven’t found her brother. Anyways, let’s go look at that car, right?” 

“Didn’t you hear the captain?” Suki pointed a thumb behind them, in the direction of the waiting area. “Iroh Ryu is here, and he wants to make a statement.”

Sokka jumped to his feet immediately, leaning in front of Suki to get a good look at Iroh. He sat in a chair, reading a novel which boasted the title  _ A Question of Blood _ . He wore a burgundy sweater vest and black slacks, and still had long straight hair that he wore down. He looked a little older now; his hair was greyed and the lines on his face looked more pronounced. Otherwise, though, he hadn’t changed a bit since Sokka had last seen him. Sokka couldn’t help the giddy smile as he turned back to Suki and chirped, “Can I take his statement?”

Suki raised an eyebrow. “I’m gonna take his statement, and you’re gonna sit in, and we’re gonna send uniformed officers to seize the car. This is the only guy who likes Zuko, as far as we know. I mean, obviously also you—”

Sokka’s eyes grew wide. He shook his head.  Between Sokka and Suki, Hakoda appeared to be confused.

Suki’s mouth hung open for a second. “You. You are having a hard time being objective, because this case involves a dead mother,” she said, stumbling over her words. “So you’ll watch, I’ll talk, and we’ll get out of your hair, Captain.” Suki walked away, and Sokka followed. He smiled back at his father, heart racing. Hakoda bore a strange, suspicious expression.

The pair hurried to the waiting area. “Who’s a bad liar now? Nice save, by the way,” seethed Sokka.

“Shut up. Mister Ryu, right this way!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter has our first real time zukka interaction!!! 
> 
> Thank you to my beta reader statusquo_ergo!
> 
> Come join me on my tumblr notyour--honey and talk about Zukka with me!
> 
> As always, your comments are greatly appreciated in any form! Your feedback helps me write better stories! Thank you so much to anyone thus far who has commented, you have no idea how happy it makes me!


	6. Chapter 6

Iroh took one step into the busy precinct and insisted that they conduct the interview in an interrogation room. “My brother has many enemies,” he supplied upon meeting Suki’s perplexed expression. “You never know who might be lurking in the shadows, listening.” 

“We understand, sir. It might be a little cold in there, though,” warned Suki.

Iroh waved his hand in a couldn’t-care-less manner. “I don’t mind the cold.”

Sokka led the way to an empty interrogation room, leaving the door open just a crack. It contained a wooden table and four steel fold up chairs. Sokka’s chair scratched against the concrete floor, creaking as he sat down.

Iroh sat down across from Sokka and Suki. He set a moss green to-go cup bearing a gold “The Jasmine Dragon” logo down on the table. He pried the plastic lid off to cool his hot tea.

Suki rested a small black device on the table in front of them. “This is being recorded, Mister Ryu,” said Suki. 

“Please, call me Iroh. Mister Ryu is far too stuffy.” Iroh smiled at Sokka with a twinkle in his eye. “I remember you. Sokka, is it?”

Sokka practically vibrated in his seat with excitement. “How do you remember me?”

Iroh sipped his tea. “You were Zuko’s boyfriend.”

Sokka’s smile shattered. “What?” Sokka sputtered, whipping his head towards a snickering Suki. “How did you know about that?”

“I may be old, but I’m not blind.” 

“Mister Iroh,” interrupted Suki, “as much as I enjoy watching you embarrass Detective Clearwater—and I enjoy it  _ very _ much—I do need to take your statement. We have a lead on this case that we need to follow up on.” 

Iroh nodded solemnly. “I’ll start from the beginning, then.”

Suki and Sokka eagerly leaned forward in their seats. 

Iroh cleared his throat and looked down at his tea for a few moments, gathering his thoughts. He smiled at the two detectives, but the expression didn’t reach his eyes. It was merely a flash of teeth and uptilted lips, further betrayed by the quiver in his voice as he spoke. “When Ursa died, my son, Lu Ten, had been dead one year. He was fighting overseas. He died at the hands of one of his own soldiers just a day before his captain pulled his squadron.” Iroh’s shoulders slumped. “After Lu Ten’s death, Zuko became a second son to me. He resembled Lu Ten in many ways. Wit, intelligence, and an unrelenting respect for authority. I wish they both would have rebelled more. Maybe then we wouldn’t be in this position.”

“Eight years ago, my brother secretly purchased a property under my name, as a gift. He wanted to congratulate me on my brand new tea shop’s opening. That’s what he will tell you if you ask him.” Iroh shook his head, false smiling dropping from his lips. “I went up to visit my property. I had plans to develop it into housing and sell it for a profit. I expected to find the empty fields and abandoned barns characteristic of northern Ontario. What I found instead shocked me. I never knew my brother to be capable of such brutality.” 

“What brutality?” Sokka sat on the edge of his seat. 

“People in groups of fifteen to twenty, packed in trucks, guarded by armed men. Young people, mostly, tied up and gagged. Some conscious, some not. Girls and boys so young they hadn’t developed yet, crying out for their parents. A runway and a few prop planes. Fire Industries trucks trickling in and out of the warehouses. I didn’t dare go inside the buildings. I could only imagine what horrible things were being done inside.”

“He was trafficking them,” whispered Suki, jotting furiously into her notebook. “But why put the property under your name?”

“Leverage,” said Iroh, scratching the back of his neck. “After my nephew told the police that he had seen Ozai kill Ursa, he locked him away from the world. Zuko tried very hard to tell people what he saw even after the ordeal he went through the first time. I was the only one who would not yield to this request to stay away, and one of the only adults to believe him. I worried what my brother would do to Zuko if I were to step forward. Especially after Ursa. That boy means more to me than anyone in the world.”

“But Zuko is gone now, so he doesn’t have that leverage on you,” pointed out Suki. 

“Exactly. Zuko is gone, and I believe my brother is responsible.”

Sokka frowned. “I hate to be the one to ask, but how do we know you’re telling the truth? I’m assuming he covered his tracks, and the property is under your name.”

Iroh nodded. “He has devoted employees. Whether they’re loyal or afraid remains a mystery to me.” Iroh took a pause to drink his tea. Then he said, “I would have no reason to expose myself like this if I was responsible. I only want to help.”

“I’ll look through the money trail. He has to have some sort of cash flow that we can track,” said Suki, eyes trained on her flip-pad. “Did he do this sort of thing to anyone else? The leverage thing.”

“No.” Iroh stared down into his cup of tea as though scouring the liquid for strength. “After Lu Ten’s death, it was not hard to tell how important Zuko became to me. He and I found one another in a sea of grief. Ozai was different. As a young man at the time of Ursa's death, I always envied him. He never cried at his wife’s funeral. He was strong, resilient. I believed this was a good thing for years. As I grew older, I came to pity him instead. What man is so cold inside that he does not mourn the loss of his wife?” Iroh shook his head in scorn. “Then my nephew was finally allowed to send me emails. We knew Ozai was still watching, so we spoke in code.”

“Code? We found a weird chain of emails about tea,” said Sokka, looking at Suki and then back to Iroh.

Iroh nodded. “I only saw him once from the time my brother took custody of him again, at a formal dinner, where we arranged the system. The colours of the tea corresponded to how he felt that day. We found a way to stay connected, small as it was. Once, for five months, he sent a single word every night. Hibiscus. Hibiscus. Over and over again. Red, sour tea. Anger and resentment. He was starved for human interaction.” Iroh met Sokka’s gaze, steady, so that Sokka had trouble not casting his gaze down in shame. He knew logically that he did all he could with the tools he had, but knowing that Zuko was so lonely made his heart feel as though it were being tightly clenched in a fist. 

“Ozai crushed my nephew, and now he is gone. He took everything good away from Zuko. I could not protect him then. For that, I have to pay my dues. I understand if you must arrest me.” Iroh stuck out both wrists, smiling at a perplexed Sokka. 

Sokka gently pushed Iroh’s hands back towards him and haltingly said, “We don’t need to arrest you, Mister Iroh. You’ve been incredibly helpful, and you might have brought us closer to finding Zuko. You’re free to go.” 

Suki stood up to shake Iroh’s hand. He greeted her with both hands, shaking twice and then squeezing. She smiled, looked to Sokka, and said, “I’m gonna go look into this warehouse. Mister Iroh, if you have a moment, please join me at Detective Sokka’s desk so we can sort out some of the finer details.” Suki left the room, door ajar, and Sokka and Iroh were alone. 

Sokka scooted forward in his chair. “Tell me about Zuko.”

Iroh smiled. “What would you like to know?”

“How was he after? I mean, after he left.”

“Zuko is a sensitive boy. He feels more deeply than most. He’d just lost his mother. He was devastated that he had to lose you as well.”

The corner of Sokka’s lip twitched. He felt ashamed at his own interest in the gory details of Zuko’s misery. It wasn’t interest in Zuko’s sadness so much as the way Sokka affected him. “I tried to find him. For years, I asked around and tried to get in contact with him. I searched anywhere that could be searched.”

“You two formed a deep connection. You feared losing it. You loved him, did you not? You felt something tender for him. Without him, that feeling became the tenderness of a bruise.”

“No one ever understood me like he did.”

“How has your time without him been?”

Sokka considered his answer. Life without Zuko exacerbated the pain of losing his mother. The one person who had fully understood his pain outside of his family was taken from him as well. There had been days when he could hardly breathe. “My life is divided into before Zuko, and after Zuko.”

“And the time you spent with him.”

Sokka sank into himself. In a quiet voice, he said, “If I had known I would never see him again, if I had known he would be taken away from me like this, I would’ve done a better job protecting him. I was so carefree.”

Iroh leaned forward and placed a warm hand on Sokka’s shoulder. In a soft tone of voice, he said, “The time you spent together healed the both of you in places you did not know had been hurt. You completed one another in this way. But it was not enough time. A wound left unhealed becomes infected.” He squeezed Sokka’s shoulder, comforting, gentle, a reassurance that Sokka did not bear the weight of Zuko’s pain on his back. “Zuko drew away from the world as much as he was hidden from it. He was brought out for special occasions to ward suspicions and otherwise hidden away like a painting that may dull in the sunlight.” Iroh eyed the ground, a sad smile gracing his lips. “He existed in a performative life. He did not live.”

“He said back then that he would never be happy again.”

“He will be. He spoke of you, the one time I saw him.”

Sokka’s eyes grew wide. “What did he say?” 

Iroh pulled his hand back to sip at his tea with both hands. “He told me the story of the time he got a sunburn.”

Sokka wrinkled his nose. “To be fair, I don’t burn and I didn’t know that would happen. I would’ve brought him into the shade.”

“He said you tried rubbing oil on the burn.”

“I was a teenager, I didn’t know!” Sokka snickered to himself, leaning back in his chair. “He was okay later. My dad made him lemonade and he drank half the pitcher in one go. Did he say anything else?”

“He said he missed you nearly as much as he missed his mother.” 

Sokka’s breath caught in his throat, an uncomfortable lump that caused his eyes to water. He coughed and looked away. 

“Ozai took both Zuko’s mother and you away from him. He could only properly mourn his mother.”

“I always worried he would have forgotten about me.”

“You were the only person to ever love him after his mother’s death. How could he possibly forget you?”

Sokka flushed. “Do you know what happened to Ursa?”

“Yes.” Iroh stood from his chair, picking up his empty cup. He regarded Sokka with an odd expression and tilted his head forward. “Don’t you?”

Sokka rose from his seat. “I don’t have any proof, but I believe what Zuko saw must have been true.”

“The truth will triumph, eventually, as it did with Ozai’s operation. Ursa was a strong woman. I do not believe her spirit will rest until things are right.” Iroh stuck his hand out, and Sokka shook it. Iroh’s skin was warm and dry. “Please, call me if you need anything else.”

“We will.” 

Iroh smiled his twinkling smile, then turned around and left the room. He left the door wide open, flooding the otherwise relatively dark room with artificial light from the hallway. Sokka glanced at the clock above the door. Barely noon. There was plenty of work to do, though. He already had an idea on how they could investigate the property up north without alerting Ozai. He would have to send someone else to check out the car they’d found, though.

He was about to turn and leave, when his cell phone began to buzz in his pocket. He pulled it out of his pocket. Unknown number. Sokka hesitantly pressed the green answer button and pressed the phone to his ear. “This is Detective Clearwater.” 

“Hi, Sokka.”

Sokka’s heart sank to his stomach. His breath hitched, thoughts of the work he had to do dying in their tracks. His voice had grown deeper over the years, but the tone was unmistakable. “Zuko?” He cradled the phone with both hands, rushing out of the interrogation room and into a dark, empty supply closet. He shut the door and leaned against it to ensure total privacy. “Is that really you?”

“It’s really me.”

“Fuck! Where are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Are you alone?” Zuko’s calm tone of voice was really starting to freak Sokka out. His pulse was pounding in his ears, mouth suddenly dry as he tried to decide what to do. Call Suki? Someone might be listening. Call Iroh? Same problem. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m alone. Where are you?” 

“I’m safe. Listen, I don’t have a lot of time. I need you to listen carefully.” He sounded urgent. Sokka held his breath. “Get a pen and paper. You need to write a few things down.”

Sokka patted himself down, locating a blue pen and an old receipt in his jacket pocket. He pressed the phone between his shoulder and his ear, smoothed the receipt down on an upturned bucket, and said, “Alright, I’m ready.”

“My Amex bank card should be in my phone case. My pin is 37926. You’ll go online and transfer three million American dollars from my savings account to my checking account. My passcode is Iroh4444, all lowercase. You have two hours.”

“Two hours until what?”

Zuko hesitated. “Can you do it? For me?”

“Where are you? Just tell me where you are, I’ll come and get you. You don’t have to do this. I can come to you, wherever you are.” 

Zuko ignored him entirely. “Once you’ve transferred the money, I’ll call you again and tell you where I am.”

Sokka sighed and tipped his head back, eyes closed. He was dizzy with anxiety. He whispered, “Are you really okay?”

“Yes.” Zuko was quiet for a moment, his voice a near whisper when he spoke. “Do this for me, Sokka. Please.” 

The line went dead in Sokka’s ear. He pulled the phone back, staring at the screen. The phone call had lasted just over a minute, which was not long enough to trace the call. 

Zuko was alive. More than that, he sounded calm, if rushed. Was he being held at gunpoint? A knife to the throat, maybe? No, he couldn’t entertain those images. Zuko was alive, and that was all he knew for a fact. There was far too much work to do. Sokka cradled the phone to his chest, the unsteady rush of his beating heart rendering him so dizzy he could hardly stand. It was a strange emotion, so happy he could vomit, so scared he could run ten miles, all commingling in an adrenaline soup.

Sokka snatched up the old receipt where he’d written down Zuko’s bank information. He raced out of the storage closet and back to his desk, tripping over his own feet, to where Iroh was still providing Suki with details about the property up north. 

“You’ll never believe what just happened!”

Suki looked up from her notepad and regarded Sokka with exasperation. “You’re being way too loud.”

Sokka waved his phone in her face. “Zuko just called me!”

Suki blinked. Iroh clapped his hands in delight. “How is my nephew?” 

“He’s good. He said he was safe. I need to get back into evidence.”

Suki narrowed her eyes. “What for?”

“Zuko told me that I needed to get his debit card and transfer three million dollars into his account. Once I do that, he’ll call and tell me where to find him.”

“Are you kidding me? We’re not doing that.”

“But it’s just moving some money around in his accounts! He asked me to do it himself!”

“He probably has a gun to his head! We should trace the call instead, figure out where he is, and gear up to go get him.”

Sokka shifted uncomfortably, once again pushing the image away. “We can’t. It was probably a burner. It had a blank caller ID, and the call lasted less than two minutes. We won’t find anything.” 

“Dammit!” Suki collapsed in Sokka’s chair, holding her head in her hands. 

Iroh looked at Sokka, then down at Suki. “Is there any other option?”

“No.”

“What about the Saturn Ion?” Sokka asked. 

“Way ahead of you. I sent two uniformed officers to check it out. They should call at any minute and tell me what they find.”

“Fine. We have two hours to move the money around. In the meantime, I have an idea on how we might be able to gather evidence on Ozai’s operation without alerting him.”

Suki perked up at hearing this. “What do you have in mind?”

“Actually,” said Sokka, turning to Iroh, “we’ll need your help.” 

***

In thirty minutes, the details of Sokka’s plan had been hammered out. Iroh was off executing phase one, alone so as not to alert Commissioner Zhao, and Sokka was a hair away from breaking Suki on moving Zuko’s money around. 

“It’s not like I  _ want _ to! But you said yourself. The uniformed officers didn’t find the car, and we have no other leads.”

Suki said nothing, but Sokka could practically see the irritation boiling just beneath her skin. He’d learned through trial and error how to safely weaponize Suki’s anger towards him. “Fine. Fine! But only because it doesn’t involve transferring any money to anyone else. I do  _ not  _ negotiate with hostage takers. We can track where the money goes and find the bastards that did this. I’ll get the phone from evidence.”

Sokka beamed and watched Suki walk off, clearly annoyed that she’d lost to Sokka twice in two days. He didn’t care. He was almost to Zuko. 

He wondered if Zuko looked different now. Was his hair still down to his ears? Sokka had never bothered changing his own hairstyle in over two decades of having hair, but that was just a personal decision. There was also Zuko’s scar to account for. Once he was safe, and they could talk and relax, would he let Sokka stroke his hair, hold him? How would the scar feel beneath Sokka’s hand?

Would Zuko even want to know him like that anymore? Sokka wouldn’t fight it if Zuko wanted to be left alone. It would smart like a burn, but all that mattered was that he was safe. Zuko meant the world to him, but Sokka wasn’t about to pretend that part of that adoration hadn’t been borne of being separated for so long. He knew himself well enough to understand that he’d be able to walk away if Zuko said no. 

He could still cherish what time they shared in the past. The sunburn incident, for example. The memory was so clear it felt like it happened yesterday.

_ “Sokka, don’t touch it!” _

_ Sokka gingerly ushered Zuko into the empty bathroom and locked the door behind them. “Alright, alright, I’m sorry. My dad told me that castor oil heals everything!” _

_ “Not a sunburn,” hissed out Zuko between grit teeth. He hunched over and slowly peeled his t-shirt over his head. He caught Sokka’s gaze and huffed, “Jesus, even while I look like a boiled lobster?” _

_ Sokka flushed. “Let me help you.” He reached forward, helping Zuko pull the shirt over his head without touching the burnt skin of his neck.  _

_ “You just want an excuse to touch me,” said Zuko, voice muffled by the shirt. He tossed the offending article on the ground. _

_ “Well, I guess you could say… you’re really hot.” Zuko’s smile fell. Sokka snickered. He stopped mid-laugh when Zuko began unbuttoning his pants. “What are you doing?” _

_ “Taking a shower. Only soap is gonna get the oil off.” Zuko tossed his pants to the floor and turned to start running the shower. “You staying?” _

_ Sokka swallowed. His ears burned, but not from the sun. “Sure.” _

_ Zuko turned to look at Sokka. “Don’t look at me like that. You’re just gonna help me get the oil off my back. It is your fault, after all.”  _

_ Sokka winced. “Sorry.” _

_ “I’m not mad,” said Zuko, before kicking off his flip flops. He climbed into the shower, hissing as cold water hit his boiling skin.  _

_ “You sure?” _

_ “I’m sure. Now come here.” _

“Hey. You zoned out.” Sokka looked up. Suki stood in front of him, plastic baggie in hand containing Zuko’s cell phone. She sat behind Sokka’s desk again and snapped on a pair of gloves

“Suki, what if he doesn’t like me that way anymore?”

Suki frowned, pulling out the phone and peeling off the phone case. A silver card clattered onto the table. “He might not.”

“Very reassuring.”

“What does it matter?” Suki began typing on the keyboard, looking between the back of Sokka’s old gas receipt and the silver card.

“Well, it matters to me. I’ve never liked anyone else like that.”

“We won’t know for sure until we find him, right? Can’t prove a negative and all that.” She smiled up at Sokka, then peered down at her screen. “Alright. What was the amount?”

“Three million. Savings to checking. Seems weird to me. If he’s gonna transfer the money anyways, why get me to do this?”

“To make sure we’ll do anything he tells us to do. It’s a small and dumb task, and yet here we are.”

“I guess.” Sokka wrinkled his nose. “Imagine having three million dollars just lying around in your savings account.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Me neither.”

The clock ticked. The precinct bustled with people. A child cried down the hall. 

“Done. There. Now we wait.”

Sokka drummed the tops of his thighs. “We should check on Iroh.”

“I talked to him on the way down to evidence. He’s fine.” 

“I guess I’m scared.”

“Look at you, opening up,” crowed Suki, bagging up the phone and debit card again.

“Someone told me I had a bad habit of not telling people when I’m hurting.”

“Sounds like this someone is pretty smart.”

Sokka shook his head. “She has her moments.”

Before Suki could retaliate, Sokka’s phone began to buzz on the desk. An unknown number was calling. Sokka’s heart began to race again. “That was fast,” he said in a breathy voice.

“You should probably answer it.”

Sokka nodded, pressed the green answer button, and pressed the phone to his ear. He cleared his throat. “Detective Sokka Clearwater speaking.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaah finally, the long awaited Zukka action in real time! We're getting there, folks!
> 
> As always, thank you to my beta reader statusquo_ergo!
> 
> Come join me on my tumblr notyour--honey and talk about Zukka with me! Share your headcanons, your prompts!
> 
> As always, your comments are greatly appreciated in any form! What did you think of this chapter? Your feedback helps me write better stories!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Terribly sorry for the slow update! I will not abandon this story, not to worry. Life just gets hectic! Enjoy this longer than usual chapter with some tender zukka (finally)!

“You did what Zuko asked.” The voice on the other end belonged to a woman. Sokka deflated a little.

“Now tell me where he is.”

“18 Penn Street. The boarded up building.” The line clicked in Sokka’s ear. Suki stared at him urgently. 

“Well?”

“We have a location.”

“Great!” Suki rose to her feet. “I’ll fetch the captain, and we can all go.”

Sokka paled. “Why does he need to come?”

“Your little romantic venture is not more important than the possible danger of the situation we are running into head first.”

Sokka grunted, looking down to pick at his jeans. “Yeah, okay.”

“Gear up. We’ll meet you downstairs in five.”

***

Sokka had not exaggerated when he said Suki drove like a frat boy. She whistled past pedestrians with dangerous proximity, careening down city streets like they were German highways. The police siren screamed its tinny warning to all those driving in front of her.

“Suki, you ran a yellow light!” cried Hakoda, clinging to the car handle with both hands.

“Cut me some slack!”

In the backseat, Sokka clutched the leather cushioning of his seat between his fingers in an effort to calm his racing heart. The closer he got to seeing Zuko, the worse the twisting anxiety felt, like a peach pit taking root in his gut. “How close are we?” 

“Penn Street is just to this left,” said Suki, veering left so fast that Hakoda and Sokka were thrown against their car doors. 

A minute later, Suki clicked off her siren and turned down into a narrow street. She peered out the window, the car slowing to a crawl. “Guys, which one is eighteen?”

Sokka pointed at a crumbling grey building. A demolition notice planted in the earth appeared faded from years of Ontario winter snow. Giant twin flower pots circled the door, housing limp yellow ferns. On the front door, someone had spray painted the number “18” in dripping fluorescent orange. 

Suki stopped the car. Hakoda craned in his seat to look at his two detectives. “Alright, let’s go over the plan one more time. We go in together and take all four floors. If we find a perp, Suki and I go after them. If we’re outnumbered, the three of us go together. If we find Zuko, Sokka takes him out and calls Bato. I’ve got him on standby two blocks away for medical care. Only in an absolute emergency do we call for backup. Otherwise, phase two and three of this operation are blown. Any questions?” 

Suki and Sokka shook their heads. 

“Then let’s move!” 

The three jumped out of the car, weapons in hand, and approached the building. The door cracked open with a push of Hakoda’s foot. They stepped inside, footsteps echoing, and flicked on their flashlights. 

Water dripped somewhere, echoing throughout the room. Cloth sofas and armchairs, the remains of a lobby, were torn up and nibbled through by rats and mice. The beams of their flashlights scanned the room.

“It’s empty,” whispered Hakoda, nodding towards the staircase. “Let’s go upstairs and keep looking.”

“Wait, do you hear something?” Suki pointed towards a closed door, where the jingle of a doorknob rang through the quiet lobby. The door slowly began to creak open.

Sokka held a hand over his gun and didn’t dare breathe. 

A rumpled Zuko stumbled out, squinting and frowning under the beam of flashlights. He still wore his blue pajamas and robe. A threadbare blanket draped around his shoulders. Long black hair fell in unwashed stringy strands around his face where it wasn’t sticking up around the back of his head like the fur of a terrified cat.

He raised a pale hand awkwardly, half waving and half covering his bloodshot eyes. “Who are you?” 

Sokka’s grip on his flashlight slackened, and it clattered to the floor. Sokka jumped at the loud sound, yelping, “Shit!”

“We’re here to get you out of here,” said Suki, aiming her flashlight at the ground. Zuko lowered his hand. In the dark, the deep, purple set of his under eyes stuck out prominently.

“Sokka here will escort you out,” Hakoda added, also lowering his flashlight. Sokka crouched on the floor and slapped his flashlight in an effort to turn it back on. He jumped back up upon hearing his name, grateful that the cloak of darkness hid his bright red face. 

Zuko shuffled forward. Sokka hurried towards him. He instinctively reached out to wrap Zuko’s arm around Sokka’s shoulder and snake his arms around Zuko’s waist, holding him up like a drunken man. 

Zuko’s breathing picked up near his ear, hot breaths sending shivers down his spine. In an effort to ignore his own racing pulse, Sokka leaned down into his walkie-talkie, pressed a few buttons, and said, “Bato, we need you at eighteen Penn Street. Meet me outside.”

“We’re gonna investigate the rest of the building,” said Hakoda. 

Zuko stared at Hakoda like he was reading his lips. “There’s no one here except for me.”

Suki looked puzzled. “He looks like he’s gonna pass out. Get him outside.” 

“Yeah, okay.” Zuko’s head slumped over onto Sokka’s shoulder. 

“Suki and I won’t be long. Keep him safe.” Hakoda left the pair with one last wary look before he and Suki advanced up the stairs. Silently, Suki mouthed “Good luck.” Sokka smiled.

“Hey, you with me?” whispered Sokka, pressing a hand to Zuko’s forehead. Clammy, ice cold flesh.

“I don’t need your help,” muttered Zuko. He tried to push away from Sokka, but stumbled over his feet and hissed. 

Sokka reached for him and hoisted him back up. “Looks to me like you do.”

Zuko shook his head, wriggling as much as his limited energy would allow. “No time. I need a computer. Or else this whole thing wasn’t worth it and I blew everything for nothing.” He stopped, glancing up at Sokka, breath caught. Even settled into the exhausted lines of his face, his eyes shone with determination. A wet chunk of hair stuck to his cheek. Sokka tightened his grip. He cleared his throat, looked away, reminded himself that this was a mission.

Sokka pocketed his flashlight and squeezed his eyes shut. Today had tested him beyond his limits. Zuko was in no state to walk, feet barely staying planted on the ground. “I’m gonna carry you, okay? Just until we get outside.”

If Zuko protested, Sokka couldn’t hear it past the rush of blood in his ears. He stooped down, hooking one arm underneath Zuko’s knees while reaching the other around Zuko’s back. He huffed. Zuko became a dead weight in Sokka’s arms. “All good?”

“I hate being carried,” Zuko whispered, voice cracking on the last word. 

Sokka stepped outside. Zuko groaned when sunlight hit his face and lifted a hand to shield his.

Outside, Bato waited with his black Ford truck. When he saw Sokka, he furiously waved him over. The back of the truck was popped open, and a kit of medical supplies lay in wait. Sokka helped Zuko sit up in the trunk. 

Bato smiled at Zuko. “My name’s Bato. I’m a paramedic. Can I help?”

Zuko slowly nodded, as though the motion dizzied him. Bato began to work.

“Thanks for coming,” said Sokka, rubbing the back of his neck. 

“Not a problem. I owe your dad, and you did happen to catch me on a day off.” He reached behind Zuko and wrapped a fleece blanket around him. Zuko murmured something in turn. Bato leaned in, and Zuko repeated himself a little louder. “Dizzy.” Zuko shook so violently that Sokka could hear his teeth clattering.

“When was the last time you ate?”

Zuko shook his head. Bato dug through his bag and pulled out a Kit Kat bar, unwrapping it for Zuko. Zuko snatched it from Bato’s hands and ate it with the dedication of a starved animal. 

Sokka didn’t know what to do with himself other than awkwardly standing off to the side. This was how men felt in delivery rooms, for sure. Bato slapped on a pair of blue surgical gloves. Zuko floated in a world of his own as the glucose high trickled into his brain, and Bato focused on checking Zuko’s heart rate and pulse. He patted Zuko down, examined his eyes and ears, and checked his skin for cuts and scrapes. He moved like an assembly line, economical and efficient, ticking off boxes on a clipboard. Sokka watched as Bato pricked Zuko’s index finger with a little black device, drawing a pinhead-sized bead of blood. Zuko didn’t flinch. Bato dressed the wound with a bandage and peered into the device’s screen. He grabbed Sokka by the sleeve and pulled him a few steps away.

“You’re lucky you found him when you did,” said Bato in a low voice. “A couple more hours and you would’ve found him passed out or dead. Young man, I hope you’re taking him to the emergency room.”

“We can’t, not yet. He’s coming home with me,” said Sokka. “My dad is too high profile, and Suki’s mom gets surprise visits from old FBI friends. I’m the only one who can fly under the radar.”

“You’re the lead detective on his case,” Bato deadpanned. 

“Yeah, but as far as anyone else knows, I haven’t found him yet.”

Bato sighed. “I don’t get what’s going on here. Your father was vague. That said, you need to make sure he eats something proper and gets some rest. His vitals are a lot weaker than they should be, and his blood sugar is dangerously low. I think he’s been roofied. Whoever had him didn’t want him awake.” 

“I’ll take care of him.”

“You’ll take him to a hospital the second you can,” warned Bato. “I can’t check if he has a concussion. I can’t check for organ damage. I sure as hell can’t strip him down and check for cuts under that bathrobe in the middle of some old neighbourhood. He needs a proper checkup.”

Sokka nodded solemnly. “The second I can take him to the hospital, I will.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Sokka saw Suki and his father come out of the building. Hakoda walked up to Bato, who pulled him aside immediately. 

Suki sidled up to Sokka. “Zuko was right. We didn’t find anything. Did Zuko tell you anything?”

Sokka shook his head. “Bato said he’s in shock.”

Zuko stared at his feet with glassy eyes. Suki peered at Zuko and nodded. “We should get him in the car.” In a louder voice, she asked, “Mister Ryu, can you walk?”

Zuko lifted his head and squinted quizzically at Suki, processing what she had said. “I can walk.” He dropped the empty candy wrapper and pushed himself to his feet. Like a foal, his knees buckled. Sokka leapt forward to help him up, earning a frustrated groan and a half-hearted shove from Zuko. “I’m fine!” he hissed under his breath, fingers digging into Sokka’s shirt laying thin over a bulletproof vest. Sokka instinctively grabbed his wrists. Alarmed, Zuko whipped his head up. “What are you  _ doing? _ ”

Sokka dropped his hands away. “Sorry, sorry,” he murmured. He heard Suki’s poorly concealed snicker and wished he could disappear. This wasn’t how their first meeting was supposed to go. 

Zuko leered up, falling against Sokka more than stepping into him, and whispered with absolute vitriol: “I’m not a fucking damsel in distress, Sokka. I can look after myself.” This close up, the whites of his eyes appeared magenta. When was the last time he’d slept?

Sokka swallowed. “I just wanna help you.”

Zuko used Sokka’s chest as leverage to push himself back to his feet. He tried to meet Sokka eye to eye, but he stood a good three inches shorter than Sokka, and ended up rocking back and forth on his feet. He came off more hungover than menacing. “Where have I heard that before?” He sniffed and hobbled the four steps to Suki’s car, yanking on the locked passenger door. 

“Yeah, hold on,” said Suki, patting down her pockets for the key. She pressed a button and the door clicked. Zuko opened it and crawled inside, closing the door behind himself and drawing his knees to his chest. He pressed down the lock with a single finger. Suki turned to Sokka and laughed. “He’s charming.”

“He’s in shock,” Sokka said, not meeting her eyes in favour of staring at Zuko. He’d closed his eyes and sunk into the leather seat.

“He doesn’t seem to like you.”

Sokka glared at her. 

“I’m just saying. He seems pissed at you specifically. Did you say something?”

“No,” sighed Sokka, glancing back at Zuko now. “I’m sure it’s just the shock. He’ll be okay when he gets some rest, right? He knows me. Besides, he’s always been a little rough around the edges.”

“I’m sure it’ll be okay.” Suki squeezed his shoulder and offered a tired smile.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sokka saw Hakoda and Bato shake hands and exchange smiles. Hakoda joined them a moment later. “Let’s get going. I need to call Iroh and check on him.”

“I’ll sit in the back!” Sokka blurted. Before he could catch Suki’s snicker, he pulled the door open again and sat down, leaving a space between him and Zuko. It didn’t matter; Zuko lay fast asleep and slumped like a sack of flour into the corner of the car. 

***

Zuko woke up in a dark room, a scratching thirst and stiff soreness in his arms indicating that he’d finally slept properly for the first time in days. The sheets smelled foreign, like cigarettes and drugstore aftershave. He sat up, slowly so as to avoid a rush of dizziness, and surveyed his surroundings. 

A bed with blue sheets. A dresser, a messy desk. A closed door. Too dark to see any more. He slumped to his feet. Something felt wrong. Zuko looked down. His bathrobe was missing. His heart sank, and he scrambled to the door, flinging it open and hurrying down the hallway to a dimly lit kitchen. Sitting at the kitchen table, Sokka startled and dropped his pen. “Good, you’re up—”

“My bathrobe, where did you take my bathrobe?” Zuko clung to the doorframe with both hands, scrutinizing the sparse space. 

Sokka pointed behind Zuko, alarmed. “It’s hung up in the bathroom. I was gonna wash it for you.” 

Zuko twisted his body around. The bathroom door was open, and he could see his bathrobe reflected in the mirror. He marched into the washroom, dug through his pockets and retrieved the black thumb drive with a heaved sigh of relief. He sat down on the toilet seat lid and stared down at the tiny thing. His vision turned blotchy. Fast movements. Bad idea.

Sokka poked his head in. He looked about as confident as a hare. “Everything okay?”

Zuko lifted his head and stared at Sokka. He wrapped his first around the thumb drive. “Everything is fine.”

“What’s that?” Sokka stood a little straighter and crossed his arms. 

Zuko hunched over his hands. “Nothing.”

“No, it’s something.” Sokka smiled, teeth and eyes and sincerity.

“It’s  _ mine _ ,” hissed Zuko, immediately regretting his tone when Sokka’s face fell.

“Oh.”

He hadn’t meant it, but his head felt split open, his body hurt, and he couldn’t stop his nervous sweating. Sokka would understand, right? 

Zuko opened and closed his mouth a few times uselessly, finally landing on, “Can I take a shower?”

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“I want a shower first.” Then, to sound less severe, “But I’ll eat after.” People liked to feel needed.

“Alright.” Sokka uncrossed his arms. He smiled again, but it looked stiff. “I’ll put out a change of clothes on my bed. Just, uh, don’t faint. Shout if you need me.” He didn’t wait for Zuko’s reply before walking away. 

Zuko ground his teeth. He pulled at his hair, then searched the bathroom drawers for a hairbrush. He found a comb, to rip through his knotted hair. Little self punishments to draw attention away from his burning shame. The comb snagged on days old knots, but he yanked until his hair ripped out and the knots smoothed away. Something to distract from this ugly shame. Sokka deserved better.

The comb came away coated in a thin film of grease. Zuko slipped the thumb drive back into his bathrobe and peeled off his sweaty pajamas, tossing them in a heap on the floor. He drew his nose up at the smell of his own body and climbed into the shower. He turned the water on just hot enough to turn his skin a temporary pink and sighed under the spray. 

***

Sokka was under strict orders not to call anyone. Walls have ears, son, Hakoda warned. He understood it logically, but right now it felt like a personal attack on him, because more than anything he wanted to vent to Suki or Katara about what happened. All he could do was scream into his pillow and yank out his baggiest clothes. Black sweatpants and a cement grey Toronto Police Department sweatshirt. A pair of boxers. Socks, for the cold. Zuko was cold when Sokka laid him in the bed. Soft, too. He shrugged that memory away. Easy as washing off oil with water.

Sokka walked back into the kitchen and tried to focus on his work. He plugged in his headphones and practiced his breathing and thought about everything but his shrieking anxiety, but it always lurked in the background of his thoughts. His music was quiet enough that he could hear when the shower turned off, and started mentally preparing to see Zuko again. He had questions, about the case, but mostly about Zuko. He stared at his screen, read the same numbers over and over again and completed nothing. Picked up his pen. Set it down again. Picked it up. Wrote the word  _ murder _ so many times over in his notebook that his wrist cramped.

When he heard the bathroom door open, he pointedly did not look up. He closed his notebook and scrolled down to ignore new arrest numbers. No shop talk of Zuko’s case today. Too suspicious. Suki and Hakoda were taking care of it. Sokka’s only job was only to care for Zuko. 

Zuko, who seemed to hate him. Zuko, the golden goose. The bullseye for everyone involved in this case. The only one who could split this case wide open, if they played their cards carefully and cheated a little.

“Sokka, are you listening?” Sokka jumped in his seat and plucked off his headphones. Zuko stood in front of the kitchen table as awkward as a freshman in his first locker room. His cheeks, pink from the hot shower, faded into the bright red scar around his eye. Sokka’s sweatshirt drowned him, sleeves hoisted up his arms.

“What?”

“I asked if you have a hairbrush I can borrow.”

“Oh!” Sokka jumped to his feet, the legs of the wooden chair scraping against the tile floor. “Hairbrush, yes. I’ll get it.” He turned to a kitchen drawer, producing from it a black brush. He turned back to Zuko and held it out to him.

“Thank you.” Zuko took it and sat in the chair opposite of Sokka. He stared at the table as he began to brush his hair. 

“I cooked spaghetti.”

“I like spaghetti.”

“Oh good, I made it for you.” Sokka turned back around, this time shuffling to the pot on the stove. “I mean, I made it, full stop. I’m sure you’re hungry. I think I’m good at cooking spaghetti.”

Zuko paused. “You ramble when you’re nervous. I haven’t forgotten that.”

Sokka ducked his head down and pulled two plates out of a cupboard. “Put yourself in my situation and tell me how to act.”

“I’m not telling you how to act.”

“I do ramble when I’m nervous. It fills the silence.” Sokka set a plate of warm spaghetti down in front of Zuko. Zuko set the hairbrush down. 

“Why are you nervous?”

Sokka placed a fork beside Zuko’s plate and sat down across from him with a plate of his own food. “Aren’t you?”

Zuko twirled a forkful of spaghetti, the tines of the fork scratching his plate. “You’d think I would be.” He glanced up at Sokka, who hadn’t touched his food. Maybe he only set it down so he’d have an excuse to be with Zuko. “No one ever told me what they think is happening, so I have no reason to be afraid.” 

Sokka frowned. “What we  _ think _ is happening?”

Zuko stuck the forkful in his mouth. He swallowed before he spoke again. “You think I was held for ransom.”

“I know you were.”

“I made a deal for information.”

“So tell me about your informants.”

“What is this, a date or an interrogation?”

Sokka flushed. “You thought this was a date?”

“So it’s an interrogation.” Zuko took another bite. 

Sokka sat straighter. “I have my own theories on what’s happening.”

“Share them.”

“Why don’t you tell me the truth first?”

Zuko smiled for the first time since Sokka had seen him as a teenager. Sokka’s chest grew tight. He wanted to squeeze something and until it burst, grin so wide his cheeks ached. Howl in undignified laughter. He cleared his throat.

“Between you and me?” 

“Just the two of us. This isn’t an interrogation.” Sokka smiled, and Zuko turned his attention to his plate. The pasta left him warm and full enough that his body could muster a proper flush of his face. 

“Fine. I’m only saying what I wanna say, though.” He ate another bite of pasta before he began to speak. “I was kidnapped. I’m not naming who kidnapped me, but they were hired by my father to kill me. They were supposed to take the blame, get arrested, and then my father was supposed to discreetly get them out of jail or something. Coward didn’t even talk to them directly. He never likes getting his own hands dirty.” 

“What made them change their minds?” Sokka scooched forward in his chair, listening fervently with wide eyes. 

“They didn’t wanna kill me, but I’d seen them. So in exchange for the money, they gave me something.”

“Is it that something you didn’t wanna show me?”

Zuko stabbed at his plate and nodded. “It’s information about my mother’s death. They said it would put my father away for good. If I get them caught, I’ll be in trouble, though. It’s a complicated relationship. I’m willing to forgive them if it means I have that information.”

The pair grew quiet. Zuko ate every bit of food on his plate, while Sokka, who ate an hour ago, pecked at half his helping.

“I looked for you.”

Zuko glanced up, then reached across the table with his fork. Sokka pushed his plate towards Zuko. “I know you did. Mai told me.”

Sokka frowned. “Who’s Mai?”

“She was my girlfriend until I started traveling.” When Sokka stared, Zuko shrugged, uncomfortable. “It was purely political. Trust me, she had her own flings. She liked women, and I liked men, and we both needed to hide. It was a win-win situation.”

Sokka relaxed, but only marginally. “How did she know?” 

“Well,  _ Detective _ ,” said Zuko, “when you ask around for someone, word gets out.”

“Why didn’t you contact me, then? If you knew I was looking for you.”

Zuko finished both plates. He stacked them one on top of the other and laid the cutlery in a neat row. “It was never safe.”

“It wasn’t safe for me, either.” Zuko whipped his head up. Sokka clutched the edge of the kitchen table, brows furrowed. “Your dad kills people, and I knew that.”

“Not for me, idiot. For you. Put two and two together, you’re a detective.” Zuko stood with the plates and forks in hand. He turned around and placed the dishes in the sink. He leaned against the counter, listening to the clock tick and Sokka’s breathing and the way his own heart thumped in his chest. Every word coming out of his mouth sounded mean and stupid and Zuko didn’t know why. He wanted to swallow down the bitterness on his tongue and save it for someone who actually deserved it. Maybe his atoms were composed of the stuff and just a natural at being horrible.

He heard Sokka’s chair scrape back, felt his heat and smelled that godawful aftershave as he stood beside Zuko. “Here, I’ll do the dishes.”

Zuko peered up. Electric blue eyes. Still as round and clueless as when they were kids, but now with the addition of lines ghosting under his eyes, promises of age. Zuko looked down at his hands, embarrassed at his own staring. 

“I am a pretty stupid detective, you know. Working under a corrupt commissioner and not knowing it, couldn’t solve a ten year old murder case. Couldn’t even track down the damn car they took you in.” He laughed, but Zuko couldn’t bear to meet Sokka’s gaze. When was the last time he stood beside someone that affected his pulse like this, sent it haywire? Sokka’s palms pressed into the counter next to Zuko’s hand. Big, bigger than Zuko’s hand. Darker. A scar on his right hand, right above the index finger. Zuko reached out to trace it. 

They both watched Zuko’s finger move so they wouldn’t look at one another and break the trance. Sokka wanted to act indifferent to preserve the innocence of their severed relationship. They weren’t teenagers anymore, though. He couldn’t just hope that things fell into place, not after searching for Zuko for so long. What if being deliberate ruined it? He wasn’t used to asking and receiving, not when it came to Zuko. 

He stood so close to Zuko that he could smell his own shampoo on him, and could study the details of his fingernail ridges and his white knuckles. Zuko grew dizzy with nerves, indignant at his own Austenian actions. Back and forth, across the slash, then down to explore his thumb, the gaps between his fingers, his wrist. First with his pointer finger, then two fingers, his thumb now, rubbing the top of Sokka’s hand like it was brittle glass. Touches so gentle they would tickle if it were anyone else. With Zuko it felt like static electricity zapping up his arm. Soft breaths from the both of them. Rain filled the silence through a cracked window, the ticking clock a comfortable companion. 

The doorbell rang, interrupting the sound of rain and the ticking clock, making Zuko jump and yank his hand away like he was ice and Sokka was fire, like he’d done something criminal and punishment loomed imminent. He gaped up at Sokka in alarm. Sokka shook his head. This wasn’t part of the plan. 

“Go to my room, turn off the light, and lock the door. Don’t make a sound. I’ll get you when it’s safe.”

Zuko huffed, but he scurried down the hallway anyways. Sokka scanned the room for any sign of Zuko, and upon finding none, opened the front door. “Oh, Miss Ryu. Is there an emergency?”

Azula stood at the door under the pouring rain, holding up an umbrella in one hand and cradling a bottle of wine in the other. She shouldered her way inside and Sokka guessed by the stench that hit his nose that she downed half the bottle on the drive here. 

She shook out her umbrella in his living room over the carpet, eyes darting around. Her hair was pulled into a gelled back ponytail. She wore lipstick. Sokka had always been perplexed by lipstick. Hers was cherry red and smeared around her mouth. “Detective, I needed to talk to you, urgently.” She dropped her umbrella open onto the carpet and flopped onto a sofa. Sokka looked up at the popcorn ceiling and away from her splayed legs. 

“If this is an emergency, you need to leave and call 911. I’m not working right now. Did you drive over here drunk?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t drive, I have a personal driver.”

“You should really leave.”

“Shut up!” She brought the bottle to her lip. Sokka hesitantly sat down across from her. He kept his eyes trained on her face, as she was spilling out of her clothes. Over a black miniskirt, she wore a red knee length puffer jacket. In cold weather like this, she must have been at a party or something. 

“How did you find out where I live?”

“I head the tech department. I know where everyone is whenever I want to.”

“That’s highly unethical. I could arrest you right now.”

“You wouldn’t arrest a grieving sister. Look at my mascara, I’ve clearly been crying. Don’t act stupider than you are, now.” 

Sokka was tired of being put down by the Ryu siblings, though he admittedly minded it much less with Zuko. He felt himself begin to twitch in carefully restrained panic. He needed her out of here and away from Zuko. “You seem pretty certain that he’s dead.”

Azula snickered into her bottle. She set it down, but only for a moment to slip off her coat and cross her legs. “Everyone left me, detective. You’re the only friend I’ve got left.”

“I’m not your friend.” A tight smile. Something to mask his fear. 

“Don’t you want to be?”

Sokka let his eyes travel down a little. Self inflicted scars on her hips, almost concealed by the lace bodysuit. Sokka felt sympathy pains. No, empathy pains. He looked back up. “Azula, you don’t actually want me to sleep with you. You’re drunk and miserable because you miss your brother, and you want a warm body to take it out on.”

Azula traced the rim of her bottle, snarky grin fading to a crushed smile. “You don’t know shit. I love him. More than anyone in the world. More than our mother ever did. You just never saw that side of me, so you made me the devil.”

Sokka laughed, forced it so he lost his breath. He leaned back on his sofa. “I was wondering when you would recognize me.”

“I recognized you the first time we met. You just weren’t worth my time.”

“What changed?”

Azula drew up her lip. “You didn’t find my brother. You’re a horrible detective. I just came to tell you that I’m getting you fired tomorrow.”

Sokka knew to act shocked, but he was weary and she was too drunk to remember this tomorrow. “Alright. I think that’s fair.” 

Azula huffed. Drank. Shuddered. Drank again. “You let my brother burn in the sun. Then you made him worse with that oil. His skin was peeling off in layers.” Sokka remembered walking into Zuko’s bedroom, the remodeled basement, a few hours later while he napped, to the absurd scene of Azula peeling the burnt skin off his back in strips. He’d never seen her so calm. He’d scampered away in shock.

“I’m sorry. That was my bad.”

“Not as bad as what our dad did to him.” She vaguely ushered at her face and rolled her eyes.

Sokka frowned. “What?”

“Yeah, I said it.” Azula uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, dropping the empty bottle of wine to the floor. She swayed, even seated, alcohol breath reaching Sokka as she hissed, “When we got back, my dad welcomed little Zuzu home by pressing a fireplace shovel into his face.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Only we were better than you, because I took care of him, and Father melted down the iron and got rid of it and told everyone that Zuzu tried to operate the grill without our help.” Azula rose to her feet, shockingly still for a blackout drunk on stiletto heels. “I told you what I wanted to tell you. I did, didn’t I?”

“In your own way, you did.” Sokka’s eye twitched, face catatonically still.

“Good. Good luck finding my brother’s corpse. Whoever took him probably left his body to bloat in the cold. Oh no, you can’t. You’re gonna be fired.” She laughed once more and marched out the door, coat hanging off her like a cape and umbrella in tow. Sokka stood by the front door and watched her driver scramble to help her into the car. She kicked him in the chest and Sokka doubted it was an accident. Azula looked too perfect even as she fell apart. She collected pity like it was money. Insects in the wild lured prey in with that maneuver. 

Sokka shut and locked the door. He closed all the windows and blinds, put the spaghetti away, and washed the dishes. When he decided that the sick rage Azula infected him with had simmered down considerably, he walked to his bedroom and knocked on the door. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my beta reader statusquo_ergo! 
> 
> Come join me on my tumblr notyour--honey and talk about Zukka with me!
> 
> Leave a comment! I read every single comment, even if I don't respond, and they truly all make my day a million times better.


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